Last Frontier Days By Hank Nuwer
President Warren Gamaliel Harding rose from newspaper editor in Marion, Ohio, to a “front porch” president after easily winning the 1920 election.
Harding embarked on a tour of Alaska in 1923. His underlying goal was to promote his bid for a second term in ‘24.
While in Alaska, Harding’s public relations skills shone.
He put the hammer to a golden spike to complete the Interior Alaska Railroad’s construction.
He visited Mount McKinley (renamed Denali until Trump reversed that name on January 20, 2025).
He briefly assumed a locomotive engineer’s controls.
Prior to his visit to Cordova, a local institution took out an ad bearing the president’s visage in the Cordova Daily Times. It noted Harding’s admonition to be thrifty.
“Why not answer the president’s plea today by starting a bank account at the First Bank of Cordova, established 1909?” the bank’s ad asked.
The Cordova editor on November 9, 1922, offered a prediction about the next election.
“It is extremely doubtful if President Harding himself knows what he will do two years hence,” the editor wrote concerning Harding’s re-election plans. “Many things can happen in two years.”
The Cordova paper noted that Harding lately looked gaunt—no doubt due to his worries over the poor health of First Lady Florence Kling Harding.
The Cordova Daily Times noted that Harding missed the company of his former Senate cronies while besieged by pork-seeking lobbyists and politicians.
“W. G. Harding of Marion, Ohio . . . craves a companionship that was his in the Senate and which is impossible in the White House,” noted the paper.
Ahem, ahem, on the contrary, ladies’ man Harding enjoyed way too much companionship.
Harding and mistress Nan Britton carried on an affair in hotels and even a White House closet, according to the mistress’s scorching book, The President’s Daughter.
Their dalliance began when Britton was 20.
As a 13-year-old schoolboy, Harding’s nickname was “Granddaddy” because he “was kind of fatherly,” a former teacher told the press.
Harding also carried on a tête-à-tête with Carrie Fulton Phillips, wife of his hometown buddy James Phillips. The affair bloomed while the two couples traveled together in Europe.
The Republican National Committee paid Mrs. Phillips to keep silent about the trysts and Harding’s unabashed love letters.
All that seamy news was far off on July 20, 1923.
That day the president stood alongside the Copper River in awe “of the massive ice-cliffs of Childs Glacier, resplendent in their whiteness and delicate tints of blue and emerald,” wrote a correspondent.
Tons of glacier ice broke off “with a roar like thunder” before the president’s eyes.
“It is one of the most impressive sights to be seen in Alaska,” exclaimed the president as he boarded his Copper River & Northwestern Railroad car.
Harding’s time motoring in Cordova was brief. He and Mrs. Harding shoved off to Sitka and one last speech before voyaging through Canada to San Francisco. Observers noted he was experiencing shortage of breath.
He died on August 2, 1923, alone in a hotel bedroom with the First Lady. The heart he gave away so often finally wore out.
The 29th president’s good reputation melted like that fallen glacier section after the nation learned of Mammoth Oil Company Henry Sinclair’s chicanery to obtain exclusive drilling rights to petroleum reserves in Teapot Dome, Wyoming.
Ever after, Harding was viewed as a flawed president. He mishandled a railroad strike and vetoed a compensation bill to aid World War One veterans in need. He limited immigration and gave corrupt cronies Cabinet positions.
Nonetheless, Harding pursued equal rights for Americans of color and favored disarmament to avoid a second world war.
Vice President Calvin Coolidge succeeded Harding and served as president until 1929.
The sickly Mrs. Harding died on November 21,1924.
Carrie Fulton Phillips died in 1960. Britton died in 1991.
Genetic testing of Harding’s descendants in 2015 affirmed he fathered Britton’s child, Elizabeth Ann (Blaesing), in 1919. Blaesing died in 2005.
Before Harding visited Alaska, he sat down for a conversation with reporters, according to the Cordova Times of November 9, 1922.
“When some of you boys get to be President—” he began.
Then he stopped and smiled, a bit sadly.
“No, I don’t wish you that much hard luck.”