Has a US President ever not been to one of the States at the time of his Presidency?

by majestic_moose_king

I spent some time trying to word this in the clearest way I could, but to expand on it a bit, has any of the US Presidents never been to one of the states that existed at the time of his presidency either before or during his time in office? So of course George Washington had never been to Alaska, but had he visited each of the first 16 states? Had Kennedy been to all 50 states? Per subreddit rules, we're only talking up to H.W. Bush, or Clinton if you like to play with fire.

boneisspirit

When Barack Obama recently visited South Dakota, it was widely reported that he is only fourth President to visit all 50 states. The other three were Richard Nixon, George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton. That means that Kennedy, Johnson, Ford, Carter and Reagan have not been to some states. But I don't remember if any of the articles said something about Presidents before there were 50 states.

OutOfTheAsh

You can add Eisenhower to /u/boneisspirit 's list of 5 non-visitors. (Don't even have to rely upon the dodge that he may just have missed AK or HI because they weren't states during most of his presidency. Eisenhower visited both in the Summer of 1960--while they were states and he president. So he missed some of the other 48). Also G.W. Bush.

President Hayes visited Oregon in 1880 during the trip when he was the 1st sitting President to visit the West Coast. California being a state for 30 years by then, there are a minimum 6 Presidents--Fillmore thru Grant--who never went to CA. A few of them also not doing extensive Southern tours--for obvious reasons.

This unfortunately murky NatGeo map indicates Geo. Washington never in his life entered KY or TN (which both became states while he was in office).

Jefferson never traveled South or West of Virginia.

It would have been physically impossible for any person to travel to all 26 states during W.H. Harrison's month in office. And practically so to get to 38 during Garfield's 6 months.

That's 17 "no" from a (admittedly selective) sample of 21. Quite adequate to conclude that most did not.

Indeed the more germane question would be if anyone achieved this prior to Nixon. I'd bet not.