O.C.’s First President Had Big Following

The bearded, rather stout man standing under the flag-draped canopy at right is Benjamin Harrison, the 23rd president and the first to pay a visit to the seat of Orange County.

It was a Thursday afternoon, April 23, 1891, about midway during Harrison’s only term. When his private train on a whistle-stop tour pulled into Santa Ana’s railroad station, the town was ready for him.

A procession, led by members of the Grand Army of the Republic, followed by 1,000 children in single file carrying bouquets, followed by the local militia in full uniform, followed by the municipal band, had brought 5,000 people to the station. A canopy had been erected from which the president could address the friendly crowd.

Harrison was Republican, and so was Orange County, but the Democrats were louder then. The Standard, Santa Ana’s leading Democratic newspaper, blared its disapproval of Harrison: “The Machine That Imagines He is President,” according to editor Dan Baker.

Baker tried to be blase about the big event, reporting that Harrison seemed to be only “a common well fed man.” But even Baker conceded that “we enjoyed the occasion as much as anyone.”

After a few words from Harrison, the crowd gave him three cheers, and the president waved as his train pulled away for the next stop.

Since then the presence of presidents in Orange County has not been uncommon. Richard Nixon even established his Western White House in San Clemente and his library in Yorba Linda, where five current and former presidents appeared for his funeral.

As recently as 1996, Bill Clinton, above greeting the locals, made the modern equivalent of a whistle stop in Santa Ana. The train was now a helicopter, the canopy a sound-amplified stage with media platform on the old county courthouse lawn. But Dan Baker would have felt right at home.

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