The briefest of presidential visits to Gilroy
”
Mayor Chesbro has requested of the City Council and has
communicated with President McKinley the wishes of the people of
Gilroy to greet him at the train and it is probable that he will
give his consent to show himself on the car platform and respond to
the patriotic greetings of the citizens.
”
– Gilroy Advocate, May 11, 1901
By the spring of 1901, America’s 25th president, William
McKinley, had been inaugurated to another term following a spirited
campaign for the second time against the famous orator, William
Jennings Bryan.
The briefest of presidential visits to Gilroy
“Mayor Chesbro has requested of the City Council and has communicated with President McKinley the wishes of the people of Gilroy to greet him at the train and it is probable that he will give his consent to show himself on the car platform and respond to the patriotic greetings of the citizens.”
– Gilroy Advocate, May 11, 1901
By the spring of 1901, America’s 25th president, William McKinley, had been inaugurated to another term following a spirited campaign for the second time against the famous orator, William Jennings Bryan.
Riding on the tide of his success was the nation’s recent victorious outcome in the Spanish American War. With 11 battleships already built over the previous decade, and more planned, the United States was on the way to emerging as a world naval power. Excitement ran particularly high over America’s potential for expansion in the Pacific arena, as seen in the planned celebrations of a new battleship inauguration on the West Coast.
To add to the expanding fleet’s prestige, on May 18, 1901, President McKinley was to arrive in San Francisco to inaugurate battleship No. 12, the USS Ohio. The vessel was to be launched from the wharfs of the Union Iron Works and slide, with a flourish from the chief executive, into the waters of San Francisco harbor.
Anticipation ran high in Gilroy, where the cost of a round-trip passenger train ticket to San Francisco to witness the event cost $2.95. In addition, an en route, 10-minute presidential stop at the Gilroy station was planned for May 13, allowing McKinley to greet the citizens from his train platform. School children were excited at what might be their only chance to see a real, live U.S. president and hear him speak.
The town’s public schools were ordered to be closed that Monday, as well as the following day, when families would have a chance to attend a grand carnival to be given in the President’s honor in San Jose. Since Gilroy’s Mayor, Dr. Heverland R. Chesbro, and the City Council, had already wired a request for the presidential entourage to stop in town, plans were well underway before the big day arrived.
A hitch in the preparations soon arose, when the president’s press secretary sent advance word to Gilroy that, “On account of Mrs. McKinley’s health, the president has requested that no cannon or ammunition be fired in close proximity to the train. If they are to be fired, citizens are requested that they be fired before the train’s arrival or after departure is one mile from the station.”
The presidential train was scheduled to reach Gilroy at 1:35 p.m. that Monday, May 13. Long before the anticipated hour, a large crowd of people from Gilroy and the surrounding area, including students and local dignitaries, assembled at the railroad station, eagerly awaiting the train’s stop.
That afternoon, at the appointed time, as eager and loyal citizens awaited the long-anticipated presidential arrival at the Gilroy depot, they found themselves just as quickly deflated, shocked and chagrined at what transpired. The event was later described in the local newspaper.
“As it passed through town, the train halted barely one minute, but not any of the Cabinet favored the crowd with a passing nod or a glimpse of their faces. All were greatly disappointed and none more so than the school children.”
Adding insult to injury, the next day, in San Jose, a Carnival of Roses held sway in the President’s honor. The event attracted people from all over the state. “President McKinley and his cabinet drew large crowds. He was received with the wildest and most cordial enthusiasm,” the press reported.
Back home in Gilroy, the news cast a gloomy pall. Once again, San Jose, the town’s larger rival to the north, had claimed the prize.
As for the U.S.S. Ohio, whose launching had been the cause celèbre of McKinley’s trip out to California, the ship went on to distinction several years later when in 1905 she became the flagship of the Asiatic Fleet. For two years, she cruised the waters of Japan, China and the Philippines. On board, she was joined by a young midshipman named Chester Nimitz, who in later years would distinguish himself as Fleet Admiral.
Alas for President William McKinley: four months after his California ship-launching visit, and the nonstop in Gilroy, he was shot and killed by a crazed assassin while attending a reception at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York. Suddenly, the vice president of the United States, Theodore Roosevelt, found himself bumped up a notch to fill McKinley’s place.
In 1907, before he left elected office, President Roosevelt sent the United States Navy on a grand tour around the world. The Ohio revisited California as part of the Great White Fleet, sailing from Hampton Roads, Virginia in the fleet’s Third Division heading around South America en route to a call at her inaugural port, San Francisco, before sailing across the Pacific to Australia and Japan. The Fleet continued home via the Suez Canal and the Mediterranean. As an emerged naval power second only to Britain, it was all part of Roosevelt’s around-the-world show of U.S. strength.
But, alas for the good ship, U.S.S. Ohio. The 12,500-ton Maine class armored battleship, laden with the most powerful ordinance of the era, was later relegated to the reserve fleet, recommissioned in 1917 during World War I, then decommissioned for a final time in 1922 and ordered sold for scrap.
Her demise did not receive a single mention in the Gilroy press, despite all the angst caused from the fallout of President McKinley’s brief passage through the railroad depot, 21 years earlier.
