Here’s a look at presidential visits to La Crosse, as Donald Trump heads back to town

When Donald Trump speaks at the La Crosse Center on Thursday, his visit will continue a local tradition of past and current presidents coming to the city of La Crosse — a tradition that dates back several decades.

Trump last campaigned inside the Center just before the Wisconsin primary in April of 2016, and he has been back to the area twice since then — most recently at the West Salem Speedway in October of 2020, running for a second term.

Current President Joe Biden came to La Crosse early in his term, in June of 2021. Biden’s main purpose was to promote mass transit with a visit to the MTU bus barn, but he’s also remembered for an ice cream stop at the Pearl Ice Cream Parlor, downtown.

Candidate Barack Obama spoke outside the La Crosse Center in October of 2008, shortly before he was elected. He came back as president in July of 2015 for a speech at UW-La Crosse.

Bill Clinton also drew a large crowd in front of the La Crosse Center in January of 1998.

The Monica Lewinsky scandal broke in the two weeks between the time that the La Crosse trip was announced, and the president actually came to town.

An unknown protester stamped the word “IMPEACH” in the snow on Pettibone Beach just before the Clinton visit.

During his first run in 1992, Clinton and Al Gore and their wives rode a campaign bus from Prairie du Chien to La Crosse by way of Viroqua, to get to a Friday morning speech at the Clinton Street Bridge.

Between Clinton and Obama, George W. Bush made one stop in the area during his presidency, in October of 2004, speaking at the Omni Center in Onalaska.

His father, George H.W. Bush, stayed at the old Holiday Inn on the pike on Halloween night of 1992, three nights before the election, and did a live cable TV interview the next morning from the GOP campaign office downtown before flying out of La Crosse.

Before the La Crosse Center was built, the Mary E. Sawyer Auditorium hosted its share of presidents and candidates between the mid-1950s and 1980.

The Sawyer stood north of the post office, where a county office building is now located.

The building hosted both incumbent Gerald Ford and challenger Ronald Reagan during the same week in March of 1976.

Richard Nixon campaigned at the Sawyer in 1960, and was back in La Crosse in 1968, when he did a TV interview on WKBT.

John F. Kennedy campaigned in La Crosse twice before the 1960 election, also speaking in Prairie du Chien during one of those trips. And JFK’s daughter, Caroline Kennedy, campaigned for Democrats in 2004 at UWL’s Main Hall, where her father had spoken decades earlier. She was joined at a campaign rally by actress Sharon Stone.

And if you want to go back even further, President Theodore Roosevelt spoke at Market Square in April of 1903, after a parade through downtown.