Presidents Day Timeline
* 1799 — George Washington, the first United States president, dies, and his Feb. 22 birthday becomes a perennial day of remembrance.* 1879 — Congress votes to make Feb. 22, Washington’s birthday, a holiday in the District of Columbia.* 1885 — Congress votes to expand the holiday to the entire country.* 1951 — The National Association of Travel Organizations floats a plan to combine Washington’s and Lincoln’s birthdays and celebrate them on what would be called Presidents Day on the third Monday in February. A few states adopt the idea.* 1968 — Congress approves the Uniform Monday Holiday Bill, moving Washington’s birthday to the third Monday in February.* 1971 — Since Abraham Lincoln’s Feb. 12 birthday is recognized as a holiday by some states, when the Monday holiday bill takes effect, some states begin to refer to the holiday as Presidents Day.* 1999 — A pair of bills fails in Congress to move the unofficial Presidents Day back to Feb. 22 but keep the name because two other presidents — William Henry Harrison and Ronald Reagan — also were born in February. Thus, the official national holiday is actually still Washington’s birthday.
“In the scheme of our national government,
the presidency is pre-eminently the people’s office.”
– President Grover Cleveland
George Nelson got that feeling about the presidency when he was just a boy. On a family vacation in Gettysburg, Pa., he stood outside a white wooden fence and looked directly onto the grounds of the farm owned by the president of the United States, one Dwight D. Eisenhower.