In the fall of 1937, the U.S. president decided to escape the confines of the East and head West. Franklin Delano Roosevelt was in his second term and needed a break from politics.
What he’d find is the stories and tales about Yellowstone and its famous wildlife are true, including an encounter with a curious grizzly bear that came a little too close for comfort for the first lady. But more about that later. First, the 32nd president needed to get out of Washington, D.C.
Earlier in the year Roosevelt had tried to push through legislation to pack the U.S. Supreme Court. He was defeated by members of his own party — including Wyoming’s U.S. Sen. Joseph O’Mahoney.
The country had been making progress to overcome the Great Depression, but was lurching into a recession where unemployment jumped from 14.3% in 1937 to 19% in 1938. He had just appointed a new U.S. Supreme Court justice in August who was under attack for his past ties to the Ku Klux Klan.
It was time to “get out of Dodge,” and that place to get away from it all was Wyoming.
So, the White House press corps received a memo Sept. 17, 1937, saying FDR was headed to Yellowstone to see his daughter and grandkids who lived in Seattle, but would meet him in Mammoth Hot Springs on the north side of Yellowstone National Park.
Along the way would be stops in Wyoming’s state capital and Casper to tout his New Deal accomplishments.
The Itinerary
“Unless something unforeseen develops, the President will leave Hyde Park next Wednesday afternoon for a trip which will take him through the northwest section of the country to Seattle,” M.H. McIntyre wrote to the White House press corps. “On the trip, the President will stop at Yellowstone and inspect a number of the larger government projects.”
Wyoming at that time was a welcoming place for Democrats. Gov. Leslie Miller, U.S. Sen. Henry Schwartz, O’Mahoney and U.S. Rep. Paul Greever were all Democrats.
FDR has breezed through the 1936 presidential election taking Wyoming with 60.58% of the popular vote to Alf Landon’s 37.37%.
So why worry?
The national press speculated about whether FDR would shut out O’Mahoney from any photo ops or opportunities to be seen with the president as payback for his stand against the president’s court plan.
Earlier in the month, O’Mahoney told the press from Cheyenne that when Roosevelt signed a sugar bill into law that was the “best answer” to reports that the president would punish Western senators whose constituents raised sugar beets for not supporting his court reform measure.
But the speculation increased as FDR headed from Chicago to Omaha on Sept. 23 to get on Union Pacific rails that would bring him to the Cowboy State.
A front-page article in Newcastle, Wyoming’s, News Letter Journal on Sept. 24, 1937, from the United Press stated that the president’s informal speeches before Wyoming voters in Cheyenne at 9:30 a.m., Wendover at 1:45 p.m., and Casper at 4:30 should answer the question about O’Mahoney.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt during his visit to Yellowstone National Park in 1937. During his stay, he tried feeding the bears. (Photo Courtesy FDR Presidential Library & Museum) 
News of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s impending trip to Wyoming had people excited in 1937. (Cowboy State Daily Staff) 
Eleanor and Franklin Roosevelt at Yellowstone National Park in 1937. (Photo by Haynes/Library of Congress, Corbis/VCG via Getty Images) 
The Casper Tribune-Herald celebrated Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s visit to Casper in 1937. (Cowboy State Daily Staff) 
The Billings Gazette in September 1937 gave the presidential visit to Yellowstone Park a banner headline. (Cowboy State Daily Staff)
Freezeout?
“Did the president make this 6,000-mile two-week trip across the country to Seattle and back as a punitive expedition against Sen. Joseph C. O’Mahoney, Democrat Wyoming, and Sen. Burton K. Wheeler, Democrat, Montana?” the article asked.
The plans for Wyoming included stops in Cheyenne to pick up the state delegation, who would travel with him to Casper, where the president intended to give a speech and visit a few of the federal projects around the city.
When the steam locomotive pulled the presidential entourage into Cheyenne, O’Mahoney and the rest of the delegation got onboard. It wasn’t until the stop in Casper that the 12 national reporters on the train, eight photographers and four broadcasters received their answer.
The Casper Tribune Herald reported Sunday, Sept. 26, 1937, that all was well:
“Dispelling rumors that there was a rift in the relationship between Mr. Roosevelt and Senator O’Mahoney as a result of the senator’s leadership in opposition to the defeated Supreme Court reorganization plan advocated by the president, they exchanged a hearty handshake when the tour through town reached Fort Caspar as camera lamps flashed. This ‘shot’ figured prominently in many photographs taken by news cameramen.”
In Casper, FDR was greeted by a crowd of 10,000 people at the Burlington station and toured the city in a car with Eleanor Roosevelt, Wyoming Gov. Leslie A. Miller, a presidential aide, a Secret Service agent and the captain of the Wyoming Highway Patrol.
From the rear of the train, he told the crowd that the government had invested $60 million in Wyoming to create jobs and pointed to the Natrona County High School sports stadium, Fort Caspar Park, and U.S. Bureau of Reclamation’s Kendrick Project that created the Seminoe and Alcova dams and reservoirs, with associated power plants and canals, as progress for the state.
“There is nothing like the unemployment today that existed when I came into office,” he said. “As a matter of fact, just in the past year the number of people on relief in this state has decreased from 11,000 to under 6,000. All of that, of course, is helping me balance the budget.”
The first lady datelined her “My Day” column from Casper. She wrote:
“We have seen the mountains in the distance and the curious formations of the country made up of grazing land and high plateaus, and steep, rocky gulleys. The grass is better this year than it was last year, there has been a little more rain. In consequence, the cattle and the sheep look better and the people themselves look more cheerful. This part of the country has been hard hit, but the people's confidence is coming back, I think.”
While visiting Fort Caspar, Eleanor Roosevelt was presented with a letter box that had a painted picture of the historic fort. She also received a pastel painting of the Wyoming state flower, the Indian paintbrush, from a Works Progress Administration art teacher.
Yeah, Those Bears
The presidential train pulled out of Casper 15 minutes late, but would stop in Thermopolis where Roosevelt saw the hot springs by floodlight and said he hoped to come back and “see these wonderful springs and wonderful people of Thermopolis, and the whole Basin country in the daylight.”
At Mammoth Hot Springs, the presidential couple joined with their daughter Anna, her husband and two grandchildren to tour Yellowstone National Park during a two-day and one-night stay.
After exploring the park from a car, Roosevelt said he understood the administration would need to work on ensuring Yellowstone could handle the visitors who would come in the future.
“In 1929, which everyone claimed was a boom year, the figures showed 290,000 persons visited Yellowstone,” he said. “This year, which no one claims to be a boom year, there were 500,000. So, our problem of the future is taking care of people, for they are going to come whether we like it or not and we have got to take care of them.”
The first lady had another observation about the national park trip that she recorded in her “My Day” column. She said the hot springs were of great interest and so were the animals.
“A number of deer and antelopes came quite near us, and three bears were fed on the trip into the park by the President,” she wrote. “One of them became a little too friendly and put his paws up on the side of the car right next to my husband.
“The thought of a nice tear from his claw on the President’s coat was too great an anxiety to allow us to loiter any longer, but the bear held up all the other cars by standing in the middle of the road.”
U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt sits atop a horse, laughing, as he and some other men prepare to enter Yellowstone, Wyoming, in 1903 for a two-week trip. A railroad car sits behind them. Roosevelt was a leader in conservation policy, increasing federal land reserves under the Forest Reserves Act from 40 million to 200 million acres by the end of his second term. (Photo by Hulton Archive, Getty Images) 
Left, an advertisement for the book "Camping with President Roosevelt" accounting his experiences in Yellowstone Park by John Burroughs published by Houghton, Mifflin and Co. in 1906. Right, President Roosevelt stops to give a speech in Newcastle, Wyoming, during his 1903 trip to Yellowstone National Park. (Getty Images) 
The Roosevelt Arch at the north entrance to Yellowstone National Park in Montana, circa 1965. Its cornerstone was laid by U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt in 1903, and the inscription reads, "For the Benefit and Enjoyment of the People." (Photo by Emil Muench/Archive Photos, Getty Images)
Roosevelts Loved Yellowstone
While a Western vacation to Wyoming and Yellowstone National Park was just the distraction FDR was looking for, the nation’s first national park was also one of the favorite places for another Roosevelt — FDR’s predecessor President Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt.
The 26th U.S. president, famous for being an outdoorsman and adventure junkie, would talk about his two-week Yellowstone vacation in 1903 up until he died.
He was the second president to visit the park, but spent the most time there and explored it extensively with naturalist John Burroughs and Maj. John Pitcher, the acting superintendent of Yellowstone. And he drew a crowd everywhere he stopped along the way.
Dale Killingbeck can be reached at dale@cowboystatedaily.com.
