Historian, impersonator travels Peninsula as FDR

Scott Larsen — a longtime FDR historian, collector and portrayer — is re-enacting parts of the president’s 1937 visit to the Olympic Peninsula this weekend.

Larsen is donning a fedora and pince-nez glasses and walking with a cane this weekend to portray President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, with his friend Margaret Bauer of Seattle by his side as Eleanor Roosevelt. He plans to give themed talks in Lake Crescent tonight; Port Angeles on Sunday; and Lake Quinault on Monday.

“History is too important to leave in the dusty, old history books,” said Larsen. “That is why bringing it alive through talks and writings hopefully will instill curiosity around local history.”

FDR’s two-week trip to the Pacific Northwest has been Larsen’s research passion for the past year and a half. It was an 8,100-plus-mile journey involving eight different train lines, two U.S. Navy destroyers and dozens of automobiles.

“President Roosevelt and First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt to date are the only president and first lady to visit Port Angeles and, I believe, the Olympic Peninsula,” he said.

When FDR arrived in Port Angeles 80 years ago today, “there was an intense tug-of-war behind the scenes — not only between the U.S. Forest Service and the U.S. Parks Service, but Democratic politicians against other Democratic politicians, one peninsula community against the other — over a proposed park on the peninsula,” Larsen notes. “Most or at least many in Port Angeles were in favor of a national park, while the communities of Aberdeen, Hoquiam and Forks — still dependent on the logging and timber industries — were against it.”

Roosevelt, a longtime tree farmer, favored a new national park on the Peninsula — “not only for us old people and you young people, but for a whole lot of young people who are going to come along in the next hundred years of America.” He signed legislation in June 1938 to create Olympic National Park.

For details about Larsen’s tour, visit the Facebook page: www.facebook.com/FDR-in-the-PNW-115558005783380.

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Among the stories Larsen has uncovered about the 1937 trip:

• On his way to lunch on Oct. 1, 1937, at Lake Quinault Hotel (now called Lodge), FDR ordered his caravan to stop at Kalaloch so he could see the Pacific Ocean. The Secret Service and local law enforcement had to stop traffic north- and southbound on the highway so the family — including two grandchildren — could sit and watch the ocean waves for 15 minutes.

• The city of Hoquiam gave FDR an album of photos from around Grays Harbor, and it’s still in the FDR Library.

• FDR’s caravan stopped at the corner of Broadway and Wishkah in downtown Aberdeen with thousands of people lining both sides of the street.

• Stopping in front of the Montesano Post Office, FDR was presented with a souvenir paperweight of the Ione tree by Mayor J.E. Calder.

Scott Larsen (as President Franklin D. Roosevelt) waves from a 1936 McLoughlin Buick Roadmaster Phaeton — the same model FDR rode in during his three-hour visit to Victoria, British Columbia, 80 years ago. (Scott Larsen photo collection)