September 18, 1952 – General Dwight D. Eisenhower and his wife, Mamie, make Iowa City one of his campaign’s Whistlestops in the 1952 election. Four years earlier – to the day – President Truman made a similar Whistlestop in Iowa City as he campaigned for the Presidency.

In 1836, William Henry Harrison became the first presidential candidate to give speeches from the back of a train. However, it was Theodore Roosevelt who, over six decades later (1900), launched the practice that would become known as the whistlestop campaign. Roosevelt’s high-energy succession of rapid-fire, trackside rallies reached deep into America’s heartland and fundamentally changed the way candidates interact with the electorate.

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