Tidbits on Taft

Tidbits on Taft 

By Lawrence W. Reed

Well over a century since he left the White House in March 1913, William Howard Taft is not remembered much by Americans beyond his 350-pound girth. He was a lightweight when it came to policy. A lackluster one-termer, it’s hard to claim he made much of a lasting difference. Nonetheless, let me offer a couple tidbits that might be of interest.

Oklahoma claims to be the only state in the Union with a municipality named for America’s 27th President, William Howard Taft. Located in Muskogee County in the eastern side of the state, the town of Taft is home to fewer than 200 people as of the 2020 census.

But wait! What about Taft, Montana? Sadly, that’s a ghost town now, having burned to the ground in The Big Fire of August 1910. Oddly enough, however, Exit 5 on I-90 in the Treasure State is marked “Taft” even though there’s nothing to see but a sand pile and some old railroad ties. When Taft was President Theodore Roosevelt’s Secretary of War, his train stopped briefly at a work camp in the area. He gave a speech to mostly drunk railroad, mining and forestry workers in which he lambasted the place as “a blight on the American landscape” and admonished the folks to clean up their act. The locals took it as a compliment and decided to name the town after him. Before it burned in 1910, a critical reporter dubbed it “the wickedest city in America” because of its two dozen saloons and more prostitutes than anybody could count.

Taft himself was elected President of the United States in 1908, so he held the office at the time the fire wiped Taft, Montana, off the map. He made no statement mentioning the town that bore his name.

In 1911, the Arizona Territory applied for statehood. Satisfied that its proposed state constitution met federal requirements, Congress approved and sent a bill to create the state to the desk of President Taft. Admission to the Union would normally be a routine matter at this point but Taft vetoed the measure. His objection? Arizona’s constitution allowed for the popular recall of judges, which offended Taft’s sensibilities about judicial independence.

The President’s view prevailed when Congress and Arizona voters approved a revised state constitution that excluded the recall of judges. On Valentine’s Day 1912, as he signed the bill that made Arizona the 48th state, Taft became the first American president to be filmed by a motion picture camera in the act of putting his name to a law.

Now, most of you readers can’t claim that you never learned anything from my humble website.

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(Lawrence W. Reed is President Emeritus, Humphreys Family Senior Fellow, and Ron Manners Global Ambassador for Liberty at the Foundation for Economic Education in Atlanta, Georgia. He blogs at www.lawrencewreed.com.)