We are here in south dakotas black hills, Custer State Park and we are at the State Game Lodge, which is a 1920s era building that was constructed several years before president coolidge made summer white house here in 1927. So president Calvin Coolidge and the first lady and Grace Coolidge stayed here for nearly three months from june. Through september 1927, while they were on vacation that summer, Calvin Coolidge took office in 1923 when he was vice president. Warren harding died and, so he served out the last little bit of warren term, and then he was elected to his own term in 1924. And so he came to south dakota in 1927 when a lot of people were speculating would here, would he not run for another term in 1928 . And it was widely expected that he would. But he came here in 1927 because he was looking for place to kind of escape the oppressive summer in washington, d. C. , in the mosquitoes and bugs and attention of the white house coolidge had vetoed a farm bill and there was a farm going on and south dakota was actually kind of the epicenter of that. Crop prices had reduced by about 62 during the early to mid 1920s in south dakota. And so the farm bloc in Congress Passed bill called the mcnary haugen farm re bill. That was the plan was to buy up surplus commodities and toind of dump themn E International market and raise prices for. Farmers here, coolidge vetoed. He hated government intrusion i the marketplace. And so when he did that, farmers and ranchers in the midwe a the west got really angry and the idea took hold that he kind of needed to go somewhere the west for his Summer Vacation and fences and so lots of states were considered wisconsin dierent placesut they settled on south dakota, coolidge and president s before him had d tradition of setting up summer white houses, and they had almost always been on the eastern seaboard or close to. And so it was really unusual for a president like coolidge to come this far west. But what happened was in 1926, south dakota made failed attempt to attract coolidge to set up his summer white house in the black hills. And at that time, coolidge said, it was just too far away. And he didnt think be able to transact business here and stay in touch with d. C. Well, 1927, as i mentioned he vetoed the mcnary housing bill and all of a sudden he had more of a reason to come west for his vacation. But also, south dakota had sort of legendary former governor, then a u. S. Senator named peter norbac, and he was instrumental. In attracting coolidge to the black hills. Peter norbac was a big fan of the mcnary halligan farm relief bill, and he really wanted to bring coolidge out here, lobby him about that bill all summer. But also we had this mountain called rushmore that was there was an attempt carve Mount Rushmore. It was only a few years old. No carving had taken place, but fundraising was happening and norbac was part of that local committee of people who are trying raise money and attention to carve Mount Rushmore. And he knew that if they could get the president here, it would really boost the for that as well and hopefully make it easier to raise money by getting attention to this project and then the third reason was really norbac knew it would be a huge boost to tourism. The black hills this was a time when automobile tourism was just beginning and black hills was trying to market itself as a destination. Tourists, even though we were sort of a backwater, the time. And so norbac knew that if he could get the president out here, it would be huge for tourism. Rapid city in the black hills would have datelines and papers all over the country and there would be pictures and stories about the scenic beauty of, the black hills. So peter norbac really made it his personal mission to recruit Calvin Coolidge to the black hills and so and was really instrumental in getting him to select this as Summer Vacation spot. Coolidge out here in june of 1927 and his days were really scheduled. He stayed here at the State Game Lodge every generally weekday morning. A driver would him up in a in a r that was kind of a little advanced from a model t and drive him over 32 miles of gravel roads down out of black hills and then north to rapid city. And he had his office in the old Rapid City High School, which is just off downtown in rapid city. And so he went into a converted french teachers classroom where had moved in a big mahogany desk for and cleared out all the students desks. And he conducted business there and they had a huge with telegraph lines and Communications Equipment that they had set up there for the summer and he would spend this mornings in his office in rapid city and he had twice weekly press conferences there with two dozen reporters who, followed him out here from washington, and then he would be driven back here to the State Game Lodge at about 1 00 every every afternoon. And he and Grace Coolidge would have lunch here at the state game, lunch. And then in the afternoons they would go sightseeing, they would go fishing. And they really traveled all over the hills and saw just about everytng there waso see in those afternoons during three months that they were here. Coolidge was obviously was nicknamed silent cal. He was very reserved person. And in washington d. C. , reporters who covered him there knew him as a very silent character, kind of standoffish. And that was what was so fun when he came out to the black hills. He was given a ten gallon hat by people belfast who were trying to recruit him to come to their summer rodeo and. He wore that ten gallon hat numerous times and sort of came part of him. He was given a full cowboy outfit and a horse by Boy Scout Troop from custer. And he dressed up in cowboy regalia at one point and really kind of hammed it up for the cameras, which was really out character for him. His secret Service Agent called it sort of a second child hood that he experienced here like he had woken up in a dime store cowboy novel and. He really seemed to have a lot of fun. And so it a really fun, sort of just bizarre summer with a president here for three months just becoming part of the part of the area. I think my opinion of coolidge was probably like a lot of people when i started the research on this project. If people have an opinion about him at all, which is that hes sort of an unknown, silent character and unknowable in a lot of ways and so it was really refreshing to this booanfind out that he really did have a personality that out here in the black hills. I think maybe most interesting, i led the book with this story about what happened that summer was coolidge deciding to essentially give up the presidency here in the black hills. And so it was august of 27. He woke up here in the State Game Lodge like every other morning and he had breakfast and he was driven to city and he went to his office there in, Rapid City High School and. He had a press conference, as he did two times a week and it was it happened to be the fourth anniversary of his ascendancy to the to the presidency when he took office. And so reporters asked him to sum up his first four years in office. And he did. And he spoke at length about that. And he ended the press conference by he wanted the reporters to come back a little bit later that morning, and he might have an announcement to make. And so the reporters didnt know what going on. He had never done anything like that. But they went away and back at the appointed time while they were gone, coolidge had written up note and he had had his stenographer make a few dozen copies of that note and he cut them up into little slips of paper, and he brought all the reporters back into his office, and he told them all, come up and grab a slip of paper out of his. And they did. And they opened it up and they saw the word and they saw this simple statement that said i do not choose to run for president in 1928, and that was how he let the world know that he wasnt to run for president. That simple statement and the reporters tried to press for more of a statement, more information and more of an explanation, and he refused. And one of the staffers at the back of the room opened the door, and they all burst out of the Rapid High School to run to telephones, telegraph wires and report this news to the country. And coolidge just walked out calmly from that announcement and was driven back here to the State Game Lodge, had lunch with his wife and that was it. And that was sort the guy that coolidge was very understated did and he but thats how he basically surrendered the presidency here in the black hills by making that terse announcement which set off all kinds of speculation about what did he mean by do not choose for months was speculation that he meant that if people nominated him maybe he would maybe he wouldnt but he sort of enjoyed watching people scurry around and try to pass his statement while he just remained silent. A lot of people thought he out here to the west to basically pander to voters that he had angered with his veto of a farm relief. And so people were surprise and confused if he had if had come out here to mend political fences, why was he then not running for the presidency again . But i think in a lot of ways he came out here really to repair any damage, maybe that he had done to the Republican Party with his veto of a farm relief bill. I think he became convinced that he had done that and the party could survive him leaving office. The reasons that he didnt want to run again, he had served a little bit of Warren Harding term after harding died, and then he had served his own four year term if hed another term, he would have ended up serving ten years in office. And so that was something that was frowned by some people. But the had also had a son die a few befo and they out here to the black hills and coolidge had said that that sort of took away the joy of the presidency for him and so apparently he had hed been thinking about it an perhaps that decision had been maybe solidified while he was out here in the black hills. But for reason, he just shows that day and made the made the decision. And nobody except maybe one or two people who were very close to him knew that it was coming. So it was a really strange thing to have happened in a Little School and a little classroom in rapid city. Calvin coolidge, a really underappreciated role with with Mount Rushmore. So that idea was hatched several years before coolidge came, the black hills, and they had some money and they had recruited godson borglum, who then carving Stone Mountain in georgia. He left that project unfinished to come up here and work on Mount Rushmore. But in 1927, when calvin came to the black hills, no carving had been started. They had had dedication ceremony in 1925, but really hadnt been able to get the project going, hadnt taken a drill bit to the mountain yet. And so Calvin Coolidge comes out here and got some borglum, who is a really flamboyant character, made a concerted attempt to recruit the president to come to another dedication at mt. Rushmore, got some borglum hired, hired a pilot to fly over the State Game Lodge here and drop a wreath essentially inviting the to Mount Rushmore and so coolidge eventually agreed to go to what they called i think they called it a consecration ceremony because theyd already had a dedication ceremony. So in 27, while coolidge was here, he was driven to keystone, which was a little mining camp rushmore. Ly at the base of mt. And then beche rd was in ondion up to rushmore he rode a horse, the rest of the way up a horse named mistletoe up to the Mount Rushmore, to the base of mountain. And they had erected wooden plank platform there where coolidge gave his speech. And during that speech, coolidge said that the effort that was undertaken to carve rushmore basically entitled the people who were doing it to the support of the federal government, which was a really big deal because coolidge was a guy who was a real miser with the federal budget and questioned everything to the amount of pencils that government was buying. I mean, he was a real budget cutter. So for him to come out here and, say that the federal government should money to a project to carve faces into a mountain was, really something and it really set project on a new trajectory. And so he did that it received attention all over the country and during that ceremony guttenberg actually scaled the side of the mountain and was hung over the side of the mountain and applied the first drill bit to Mount Rushmore while coolidge watched. And so then coolidge, after his vacation, the black hills, he went back to washington, d. C. And during his last couple of weeks in, he signed a bill that gave mt. Rushmore itsir 250,000 in federal funding, which was matching funds. And that opened the federal spigot. And then it ended up taking a long time mt. Rushmore wasnfished until the forties, but coolidge really got it started. And a lot of t mnt rushmore hist, ifou read their books carefully, give coolidge a lot of credit for getting Mount Rushmore going at a time when its future definitely was not certain. Coolidge had a lot visitors that came, and he interacted with a lot of people when he was at his office, Rapid City High School. So herbert, who i believe was the commerce secretary at the time and would be the next president , came out here and visited coolidge in his office. General john pershing, who had been a world war one hero, came out and visited coolidge here. General leonard wood, who fought fort leonard, is named after came out here to visit Charles Lindbergh and did a flyover here that was the earlier that spring, lindbergh had done flier across flown across the atlantic and he was a barnstorming kind of tour across the country. He flew over rapid city, flew over the game lodge while the coolidges were here. So rapid city was really thrilled with the attention and sort of the celebrities came to see coolidge while he was here. And he also met with a lot of just everyday people south, dakota citizens, south dakota politician towns. And he did make several visits with native americans in rapid city area. He visited the rapid city indian school, which was a boarding school for native children. He als a jrney to the pine ridge indian reservation is about 40 or 50 miles east of here. For south dakotans, it was an honor that coolidge chose south dakota in the black hills for, people in the oglala sioux tribe. This had been their land promised in a treaty only 60 years earlier. So some were excited about the visit. Others. Others were, and he was. While he was out here, he went to a in deadwood where some native americans ceremonially adopted into the sioux tribe, gave him a headdress and traditional headdress and ve him a native american name. And so he was welcomed some, but ere were others who really that some native americans did that and didnt think that that should have been done. Coolidge never came back to the black hills. There was an effort years later on, one of the anniversaries of his visit to get Grace Coolidge to come back here. She did not either. But yeah. So it was a it was a1a1 shot thing. Eisenhower did come to the State Game Lodge in the 1950s and stayed here, not as long. But there was another president ial to the game lodge. Later if you look at the exterior, it does look quite similar to what you would have seen in 1927, except back then it was just a basically a large house. But the coolidges inhabited there have been hotels added to the sides of the game lodge if you go inside the facility has been extensively renovated so that it probably doesnt look a whole lot like what the coolidge experienced but right inside the door there are two portraits of Calvin Coolidge. Grace coolidge that were painted during the summer of 1927 that are still here. It was really funny doing the research for this book because we live in era now, of course, where if a president , you know, goes golfing a few times almost a scandal, that why he working and how much time as he golfing president coolidge you know he he spent weekday mornings working while he was here and that was pretty much it mean for three months he was vacation every afternoon all summer for three months and as far as i can tell in the research that was not a National Scandal wasnt even something that people really raised an issue with or got angry with. It was of understood that a president needed time to get away and needed time to relax, get away from the strains of the office, a totally different world back the now you can imagine if president did that today just said im just going to disappear into the wilds of south dakota for three months. I probably wouldnt be accepted like it was back. So it was a really interesting was a different time for sure. This is such a unique chapter of south dakota history that a lot of people dont know, maybe because coolidge isnt usually one of the more prominent, prominent president s historically. And so i think people be really surprised to know that a president did come live in south dakota for three months and and did have as much fun as he did. And so i just had a really fun time discovering layers to the story and all the experiences that the coolidge has had here. And knowing that when you come here to the game lodge, when you drive back rapid city, you really tracing his route and the history really palpable and just like i said, a unique of history that well never see repeated. I guess what i would like people understand about coolidge and south dakota in the black hills when they read my book, is that he found such a he had such wonderful time in the black hills that really brought him out of his shell and him as maybe different kind of person than people were used to. And i just i loved how being here in the black hills and seeing the Natural Beauty here and being away from washington brought out a different side of coolidge, a playful side, kind of a second childhood, as ive mentioned. And i think that shows what a special place we have here in the black hills. And its just such a unique chapter of history that well never repeated. I cant imagine a president will ever come and live in the black hills for another for three months while theyre a sitting president. And so its just a unique, quirky, fun period of history that had never before and will never happen again. And just so many interesting things happened that summer. So i hope people get of my book that this was a sort sort of an out of body experience for Calvin Coolidge to come out here and just be a different person and enjoy himself and really open up to the people of the we