You may have seen in the news on Saturday that President Bush will be making a trip to Fargo on Thursday.

Yes, it was a front-page announcement.

North Dakota's three electoral votes haven't attracted many presidential visits over the years, so you can forgive the state if it gets a little excited about hosting the Commander in Chief.

Since being elected president, George W. Bush has visited the state one other time, a stop in Fargo in March of 2001 to push his tax-cut proposal.

It took a natural disaster to bring his predecessor to North Dakota. Bill Clinton surveyed the damage of the 1997 Grand Forks flood from a helicopter, and talked to folks at the Grand Forks Air Force Base.

George H.W. Bush spoke in Bismarck - and even planted a tree on the Capitol Grounds - in 1989.

In all, North Dakota has been visited by 11 sitting presidents. That number goes up by three if you count the visits by Rutherford Hayes (1878), Chester Arthur (1883) and Grover Cleveland (1885), who came to Bismarck when this was still Dakota Territory.

Theodore Roosevelt, who spent time here as a Badlands ranch owner in the late 1800s, visited Bismarck as president in 1903. He traveled from the train depot to the Capitol Grounds via carriage, and made a speech from a Capitol balcony.

Woodrow Wilson visited in 1919. Franklin D. Roosevelt visited the state twice (1934, 44), as did Harry Truman (1950, 52).

Dwight Eisenhower toured the new Garrison Dam in 1953, then made a trip south to Bismarck. John F. Kennedy came to North Dakota in 1963. Richard Nixon gave a speech at the new Bismarck Airport terminal in 1970 (the same place where Jimmy Carter campaigned in 1976, before winning the presidency). And Ronald Reagan visited the state in 1986.

In addition to Carter, Reagan and Kennedy, other presidential candidates have campaigned in the state, the most recent of whom was John Kerry last year.

(Reach Tony Spilde at 250-8260 or tspilde@ndonline.com.)