It doesn’t appear that William McKinley ever visited Little Rock.  He does, however, have a street named after him.  In the list of Presidential streets, he is the last President to be the namesake of a street.  It would not be until Roosevelt was named for FDR in the 1930s and Clinton Avenue was named in the 1990s that more Little Rock streets would be named for the Commander in Chief.

William McKinley, Jr., was born on January 29, 1843. He would be the last US President to have served in the Civil War, entering as a private and exiting as a major.  After the war, he returned to his native Ohio, was married and became an attorney.  From 1877 until 1883 and again from 1885 until 1891, he served in Congress.  Defeated for re-election in 1890, he ran for Governor of Ohio in 1891 and was elected. He was re-elected in 1895 but by the next year would be on the ballot for President. Famous for campaigning from his front porch, he was elected in 1896 over William Jennings Bryan.  In 1900, he was re-elected again over Bryan.  On September 6, 1901, in the Temple of Music at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, NY, he was shot.  He died on September 14.

President McKinley is responsible for the name Fort Logan H. Roots for the federal military installation located in Little Rock on the north side of the Arkansas River (now part of NLR). It was named for a former GOP Congressman from Arkansas.  As a civic leader, Roots had been involved in the negotiations for the land swap which led to the establishment of the military installation north of the river and the creation of City Park (now MacArthur Park) on the site of the former military outpost. He died in 1893 shortly after the deal had been executed.

Arkansas voters never gave McKinley their electoral votes. But when he was assassinated in September 1901, there was a public memorial service held for him at the Kempner Theatre in downtown Little Rock.  At the time, it was the largest indoor structure in the City for events.