It was officially announced in January 1978 that President Jimmy Carter would stop in Bangor on Feb. 17 and 18 as part of a two-day, three-city tour of New England, which included stops in Providence, Rhode Island, and Manchester, New Hampshire.
Bangor and Penobscot County officials began readying themselves for the visit almost immediately.
The Bangor Daily News covered both the lead up to and the visit itself extensively, with hundreds of photos — most of which were never published — held in the BDN’s archive at the Bangor Public Library. We’ve digitized some of the most memorable images.
On Tuesday, Feb. 14, 1978, it was announced that Robert and Laura Murray would host Carter at their Maple Street home. Meanwhile, at the Bangor Auditorium, a drawing was held that day to select the 2,500 Penobscot County residents who would be invited to attend Carter’s town hall meeting at the auditorium. According to the Feb. 15 edition of the BDN, the first name out of the hopper was Brenda L. Morrill of Bangor.
Carter arrived in Bangor around 6 p.m. Friday, with Air Force One touching down at Bangor International Airport. After greeting the crowds gathered at the airport, Carter and his staff beelined to a dinner held at Penobscot Valley Country Club in Orono, a fundraiser for U.S. Senate candidate William Hathaway, a Democrat.
Carter attended the dinner for less than an hour before heading to the Bangor Auditorium for the main event: the town hall meeting. Starting at 8 p.m, the president held court for about an hour, fielding questions from the crowd on topics including hot button Maine issues of the time, like the proposed Dickey-Lincoln hydroelectric project and the Maine Indian Land Claims Settlement Act. You can read the entire transcript of the meeting here.
National concerns like the energy crisis, health care and the Equal Rights Amendment were also addressed. Outside the auditorium, a group of protesters in support of the ERA held signs in favor of the measure, which 45 years later has still not become constitutional law.
Afterward, Carter made his way to the Murray house, where he spent a few minutes with the family, including meeting the Murrays’ 16-month-old grandson, Emmett Beliveau. He was in bed by 10:30 p.m., and was out of the house by 8 a.m., when he made his way to another Democratic fundraiser, a breakfast held at Husson College. By 9 a.m., he had boarded Air Force One, on his way to Manchester, New Hampshire, the final stop of the New England tour.
In total, Carter was in Bangor for about 15 hours — actually one of the longer presidential visits to Bangor over the past 150 years, most of which did not last more than a few hours at most.
Over the decades, 12 presidents have visited Bangor. The first was Ulysses S. Grant, who visited in October 1871. Later, Chester A. Arthur stopped in the Queen City briefly in 1882, and Benjamin Harrison also made a quick stop in 1889. In 1902, Theodore Roosevelt visited, and William Howard Taft stayed overnight in 1910. It’s unknown if Franklin Roosevelt ever stopped in Bangor on his way to the family home on Campobello Island, but his wife Eleanor was a regular visitor.
More contemporary presidential visitors were Dwight Eisenhower, who stopped in 1955 en route to a fishing vacation. John F. Kennedy famously touched down at Dow Air Force Base in 1963, before going to a reception at the University of Maine — just 34 days before he would be assassinated in Texas. Lyndon Johnson stopped in 1966, and Richard Nixon was met by loud anti-war protests when he was briefly at the airport in 1971.
Bill Clinton visited Bangor the day before the 1996 presidential election, giving a speech at Bangor International Airport, and although he was still a candidate for the presidency at the time, Barack Obama came to Bangor in February 2008. Donald Trump was in Bangor three times, once as a candidate in October 2016, and twice in 2020.
Carter’s visit was one of the longest and most memorable, given that he stayed with a local family and personally connected with multiple residents — in his characteristically humble, down-to-earth manner.
