Take a trip to Ohio to learn about William McKinley, Trump's much-admired Gilded Age president

Independent

12-04-2025

If you've been intrigued by President Donald Trump 's praise of his long-ago White House predecessor William McKinley and yearn to know more, it's time you head to Ohio.
America's 25th president was born and is buried in the Buckeye State, where museums and monuments to him abound. Websites promoting the state's McKinley attractions have seen a surge in page views since Trump began highlighting McKinley's Gilded Age presidency, which ran from 1897 until his assassination in 1901. Officials hope a bump in summer tourism will follow.
'I don't think there has been as much interest in William McKinley in at least a century, in terms of kind of the public consciousness,' said Kevin Kern, an associate professor of history at the University of Akron. The last time was in 1928, when McKinley's face was printed on the $500 bill.
While Trump has attached himself to McKinley, Kern says the two Republicans' political positions are, in many respects, 'really apples and oranges.'
In McKinley's day, the United States was just becoming the world's foremost manufacturing power. Tariffs were viewed as a way to protect that momentum. Today, the economy is global.
Kern also noted that Republicans took huge losses in the 1890 election after the imposition of the McKinley Tariff, and that McKinley appeared to change his tune on tariffs in a speech delivered the day before he was assassinated in 1901.
Within an easy drive of Cleveland, you can find a host of sites for learning more about McKinley's politics and personal life. Here's a closer look:
A monument to McKinley's birth
McKinley was born in 1843 in Niles, a Youngstown suburb about 70 miles (112.65 kilometers) east of Cleveland. Here, you'll find the National McKinley Birthplace Memorial, a classical Greek marble monument that sits on the site of McKinley's former one-room schoolhouse. A McKinley statue stands at the center of the well-manicured Court of Honor, which is flanked by a small museum and the community's library. The McKinley birthplace home and research center sits nearby.
Tackling McKinley's legacy in Canton
Canton is perhaps best known for the Pro Football Hall of Fame, The city, about 60 miles (96.56 kilometers) from either Cleveland or Niles, is where the kindly and mild-mannered McKinley spent most of his adult life. A young McKinley settled here after serving in the Civil War, began his law career and married Ida Saxton McKinley.
The McKinley Presidential Library and Museum is a great place to dig into the shared policy goals — especially tariffs and territorial expansion — that attract Trump to McKinley.
An animatronic William and Ida McKinley greet visitors to the museum's McKinley Gallery, which features interactive opportunities as well as historical furnishings, clothing, jewelry and campaign memorabilia. The building also houses a presidential archive and a science center complete with dinosaurs and a planetarium. The site's dominant feature, however, is the imposing McKinley Monument, which looms on a hill atop 108 stone steps. It houses the mausoleum where the McKinleys and their two young daughters are buried.
More McKinley memorabilia is on display at the Canton Classic Car Museum.
A McKinley statue buffeted by history
The residents of Arcata, California, were not so enamored of McKinley's imperialist legacy.
In 2018, amid national soul-searching over historical monuments, the liberal college town decided to remove an 8-foot sculpture of McKinley, the annexation treaty for Hawaii in his hand, from their town square. Over a century old, the statue had been moved to Arcata from San Francisco, where it was toppled in the 1906 earthquake.
It now stands at the stately Stark County Courthouse in downtown Canton, where McKinley worked as a county prosecutor before being elected a congressman and Ohio governor. It was placed there in 2023 after being bought back from Arcata by a Canton foundation and restored.
Glimpsing the McKinleys' home life
A three-block walk from the courthouse is the Saxton-McKinley House, part of the National First Ladies Historic Site operated in partnership with the National Park Service. Originally Ida's home, the elegant Victorian mansion was the couple's residence at different times during their marriage. It's not the house from which McKinley conducted his fabled 'front porch campaign' of 1896; that was demolished in the 1930s.
A replica of the porch and the actual chair McKinley sat in can be found at the McKinley museum, however, and a tabletop replica of his 'campaign house' is on view at the Stark County District Library, which now sits on the site.
If you'd like to see the porch where another Ohio president carried out his front porch campaign, try the James A. Garfield Historic Site in Mentor, about 30 miles (48.28 kilometers) northwest of Cleveland.
Tale of two churches
The granddaughter of John Saxton, a city pioneer and founder of the Canton Repository newspaper, Ida Saxton attended Canton's First Presbyterian Church, a few blocks from their home. Now known as Christ Presbyterian Church, this is where the McKinleys were married in 1871, the 'new' stone building's tower yet uncompleted. William's church was the nearby Crossroads United Methodist. Ida had a series of stained glass panels depicting the phases of her husband's life installed there after this death.
For the hardy traveler
If you're willing to travel a bit farther afield, several other sites could add to your McKinley experience. '
First is the Rutherford B. Hayes Presidential Library and Museums, located about 85 miles (136.79 kilometers) east of Cleveland in Fremont. Known as Spiegel Grove, the site established in 1916 is home of the nation's first presidential library. Its museum explores Hayes' service in the Civil War, when he was McKinley's commander.
In Columbus, about 150 miles (241.40 kilometers) southwest of Cleveland, a McKinley statue in front of the Ohio Statehouse faces west. This was where McKinley, then governor, would stand to doff his hat to Ida as she looked out the window of their apartment at the Neil House. The legendary hotel was torn down in 1980 to make way for the Huntington Center now dominating that block.
Rounding out the timeline of McKinley's life, a 96-foot tall obelisk memorializing him sits on Niagara Square in Buffalo, New York. He was assassinated by an anarchist while appearing at the Pan-American Exposition there in 1901.