Calvin Coolidge came to the Black Hills in June 1927 for three weeks and stayed nearly three months, working out of the State Game Lodge in Custer State Park while the state went to some trouble to keep him content. Six dams were built and stocked with rainbow trout hauled eighty miles from the hatchery at Spearfish, and a trail was cut along a stream so the President could fish without walking far. He kept his executive offices in the high school at Rapid City and drove in to them. He was adopted into the Sioux on 4 August and given a name meaning Leading Eagle, and on 10 August he delivered the dedication speech for the carving of Mount Rushmore. He had already ended his political career, in one sentence, two days before that adoption. On 2 August 1927, the fourth anniversary of the day Harding died and made him President, Coolidge held a press conference at the Rapid City school, handed each reporter a strip of paper, and said nothing further. The strips read: I do not choose to run for President in nineteen twenty eight. Asked to explain, he told the room there would be nothing more from the office that day. He and Grace Coolidge left for Washington on 9 September, seen off by a crowd of about five thousand.
Getting there
43.7643, -103.3808
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