Walkway of the Presidents, San Juan, Puerto Rico ~ Photo Friday

How many US presidents have visited the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico?  Did you know that of the 44 total US presidents, only 9 have ever visited Puerto Rico?  Even if you count only the presidents since Teddy Roosevelt (from 1906 to today), of those 18 presidents only 9 have visited Puerto Rico.  Between Ford's unofficial visit in 1976 and Obama's visit in 2011, 35 years passed without a presidential visit - even though the age of jet travel would make it much easier than Teddy's visit via ship on the way from the Panama Canal in 1906.

In the city of San Juan, just across the street from the capitol building, statues of the presidents who have visited the island were erected in 2010.  An additional statue of President Obama was added after his official visit to Puerto Rico in 2011.  You can see these statues below...

Theodore Roosevelt

Herbert Hoover

Franklin Delano Roosevelt

Harry S. Truman

THE PEOPLE OF PUERTO RICO HONORS

THOSE THAT WHILE HOLDING

THE OFFICE OF

PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATE

WERE SO MOVED AS TO VISIT THE ISLAND AND ITS PEOPLE

WHILE RECOGNIZING THAT THOSE THAT HOLD THIS OFFICE LEAVE

THEIR IMPACT UPON THE LIVES AND AFFAIRS OF OUR NATION AND OUR WORLD.

THE VALUES THAT REPRESENT THEM WERE DELIBERATELY COMMISSIONED

AND MADE TO REPRESENT THE FIGURE OF EACH PRESIDENT AS A CITIZEN CALLED UPON

BY THE NATION TO SERVE AN INDIVIDUAL, AS PERSONS, WHOSE HUMAN SIDE SEEMS TO

BECKON US TO COME CLOSER WHERE BEFORE WE SEE ONLY THEIR FIGURES WITHOUT PEDESTALS

NOT ORNAMENTS AS THEY SEEM TO WALK UP TO MEET US, THE PEOPLE OF PUERTO RICO

AT THE HOUSE OF LAWS.

THIS

WALKWAY OF THE PRESIDENTS

HAS BEEN CONCEIVED TO HONOR THOSE THAT ENJOYED OUR HOSPITALITY

IN THE PAST, AS WELL AS THOSE THAT MAY DO SO IN THE FUTURE

SIXTEENTH LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY OF PUERTO RICO

FEBRUARY 15, 2010

HONORABLE THOMAS RIVERA SCHATZ  HONORABLE JENNIFER A. GONZALEZ COLON

PRESIDENT OF THE SENATE OF PUERTO RICO      SPEAKER OF THE REPRESENTATIVES

Dwight D. Eisenhower

John F. Kennedy

Lyndon B. Johnson

Gerald R. Ford

Barack Obama

For more about the official visits of US Presidents to Puerto Rico, see this article at Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_visits_to_Puerto_Rico


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Published under a Creative Commons License

Heather Wilkinson Rojo, "Walkway of the Presidents, San Juan, Puerto Rico ~ Photo Friday", Nutfield Genealogy, posted January 22, 2016, (  http://nutfieldgenealogy.blogspot.com/2016/01/walkway-of-presidents-san-juan-puerto.html:  accessed [access date]).