Guess how many presidents from Florida are eligible to be carved into Mount Rushmore

News and commentary for Floridians and other Americans who care about our democracy

Feb 16, 2026

Today is Presidents Day, a time for all of us in the Sunshine State to celebrate the great men and women from Florida who have been elected commander-in-chief.

It will be a short celebration, measured in nanoseconds.

Why?

Because a president has never been born here. In fact, Florida is the largest state in America to never have been a presidential birthplace.

Which is weird, at first glance, since Florida is the third-largest state in the country in terms of population. Only California and Texas are bigger.

Yet smaller states like Ohio and New York have, combined, sent 13 men to the White House—eight from Ohio and five from New York, including the current occupant who also maintains digs in Florida, but he wasn’t born here.

It’s not like our nation’s presidents have been strangers. Many, of course, have visited (and raised money) here. Some have even launched wars from our shores. Others, still, have been snowbirds.

But not a single commander-in-chief was born on our peninsula.

Florida’s not alone in this, as you might expect. After all, there are 50 states and there have only been 45 men who have served in the Oval Office. Indeed, there are 28 other states that have never been home to presidents, either. But Florida, being so populous and all, it seems odd.

Until you consider our history:

Vacationers instinctively know this. When you drive down here from places like Cleveland or Philadelphia or Newark, you quickly notice that everything seems newer here.

That’s because it is.

Florida wasn’t always this developed. It wasn’t until after World War II that the state’s population began booming. (We can thank the invention of air conditioning for this.) In the decade between 1950 and 1960, for instance, the number of people living in the state increased by 78 percent.

One hundred years ago, the total population was 1.3 million. Today, it’s 24.3 million, nearly as big as the entire population of Australia. We are the 15th largest economy in the entire world.

Why does this matter?

Because most recent American presidents were born in either the early or mid-20th century. The current chief executive, Donald Trump, the oldest person ever to take the oath of office, was born in 1946.

At that time, Florida’s population was much smaller, a bare fraction of what it is today. In fact, in the mid-20th century, it didn’t even rank in the top 10 most populous states.

So, from that perspective, it shouldn’t be too surprising that we’re not the home state of any presidents. Bigger, older states produce more national leaders.

Not that some haven’t tried. Our current governor, Ron DeSantis, made a run at the Republican nomination for president in 2024, but fell flat on his face. Former Gov. Jeb Bush also gave it a try, but even if he had won, he’s not a native. He was born in Midland, Texas.

But, as mentioned, Florida is no stranger to presidents who have decided to hang out here. Who were these snowbirds?

The warriors included Andrew Jackson, who fought in Florida during the First Seminole War in 1817. It was necessary for the United States to invade Florida, then owned by Spain, because the Seminoles were giving shelter to escaped slaves, and we couldn’t have that.

In subsequent years, after Florida became a state, we decided to take on the Spanish again in what became known as the Spanish-American War. Teddy Roosevelt launched his Rough Riders from Tampa to Cuba in 1898, and his charge at the Battle of San Juan Hill also helped launch his political career, which eventually landed him in the White House.

Several presidents have used Florida as homes away from home.

John F. Kennedy’s family had a compound in Palm Beach long before Trump showed up at Mar-a-Lago. The family’s La Querida was their favorite winter retreat, and it was there, as I reported in a recent Florida Weekly column on this topic, that JFK wrote his 1961 inaugural speech.

Both Richard Nixon and Harry Truman, before him, had “Florida White Houses.” Nixon’s home was in Key Biscayne, and before that, Truman’s in Key West. Truman’s Little White House is still a popular tourist attraction, and it is worth the visit next time you’re in the Keys.

But long before Truman or Kennedy or Nixon, there was Warren G. Harding. He liked to hang out at the John Ringling Estate in Sarasota during the Roaring ‘20s.

Even though it was in the midst of Prohibition, Harding enjoyed his spirits. According to the never-wrong internet, he was a “regular drinker“ who, despite voting for the 18th Amendment as a senator, “kept a well-stocked supply of whiskey in the White House for personal use and for his poker games. He also frequently carried a bottle in his golf bag.”

Yet another reminder, as if we needed one, that law-breaking, hypocritical politicians are nothing new, even if we lionize them by renaming buildings and airports in their honor or carve their faces into mountains.

Speaking of which, here’s what Mount Rushmore would look like if it had been sculpted to honor all of Florida’s presidents:

One of the many enjoyable things about writing this column is the discovery of odd facts like this. I’d never seen a photo of an uncarved Mount Rushmore before I looked this up.

But my research also revealed this: The mountain was sculpted by a man named Gutzon Borgium who, as it turns out, had ties to the Ku Klux Klan.

It was named Mount Rushmore after Charles E. Rushmore, a New York lawyer who visited the Dakotas in 1884, even though a Lakota medicine man, Nicolas Black Elk, had already named it the Six Grandfathers.

It was considered a sacred place. The land was owned by the Dakota, Lakota and Nakota tribes, collectively called the Sioux and Arapaho. Their land, guaranteed by a treaty with the United States. Which was broken as soon as gold was discovered in the Black Hills. And when the tribes tried to defend their land, they were rounded up and confined to a reservation.

So, yeah, this is a great tourist attraction, but its story is, to say the least, cloudy. History can be so inconvenient sometimes, right?

Happy Presidents Day.

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