1907 in the United States

← 1906 1905 1904 1907 in the United States → 1908 1909 1910
Decades:	1880s 1890s 1900s 1910s 1920s
See also:	History of the United States (1865–1918) Timeline of United States history (1900–1929) List of years in the United States

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Events from the year 1907 in the United States.

• President: Theodore Roosevelt (R-New York)
• Vice President: Charles W. Fairbanks (R-Indiana)
• Chief Justice: Melville Fuller (Illinois)
• Speaker of the House of Representatives: Joseph Gurney Cannon (R-Illinois)
• Congress: 59th (until March 4), 60th (starting March 4)

• January 1 – Daniel J. Tobin becomes president of the Teamsters, beginning a 45-year presidency.
• January 14 – B. B. Comer is sworn in as the 33rd governor of Alabama replacing William D. Jelks.^[1]
• January 23 – Charles Curtis from Kansas becomes the first Native American U.S. Senator.
• February 6 – Nantahala National Forest is established.
• February 12 – The steamship Larchmont collides with the Harry Knowlton off Block Island Rhode Island; 183 lives are lost.
• February 26 – President Theodore Roosevelt appoints Col. George Washington Goethals as chief engineer of the Panama Canal.
• March 1 – Colville National Forest is established.
• March 2 – Umpqua and Custer National Forest are established.
• March 9 – Reclamation Service within the Department of the Interior.

• April – This month's issue of Good Housekeeping magazine displays the cover price One Dollar a Year (under the title).
• April 7 – Hersheypark opens in Hershey, Pennsylvania.
• April 15 – Triangle Fraternity, for engineering and related majors, is founded at Pennsylvania State University.
• April 17 – Today is the all-time busiest day of immigration through Ellis Island;^[2] this will be the busiest year ever seen here, with 1.1 million immigrants arriving.^[3]
• April 18 – The USS Kansas (BB-21), a Connecticut-class battleship, is commissioned.
• May 25 – Inyo National Forest is established.

• July 1 – The United States Treasury stops collecting interest on the 1879 $10 Refunding Certificates, which have their value set at $21.30.
• July 21 – The SS Columbia sinks after colliding with the lumber schooner San Pedro off Shelter Cove, California, resulting in 88 deaths.
• July 23 – Chugach National Forest is established.
• August 1 – Aeronautical Division established within the U.S. Army Signal Corps.
• August 15 – Ordination in Constantinople of Fr. Raphael Morgan, first African-American Eastern Orthodox priest, "Priest-Apostolic" to America and the West Indies.
• August 17 – Pike Place Market in Seattle, Washington officially opens for business.
• August 28 – American Messenger Service, predecessor to UPS, is founded by James E. (Jim) Casey in Seattle, Washington.^[4]
• September 7 – The new passenger liner RMS Lusitania makes its maiden voyage from Liverpool, England to New York City.
• September 10 – The first Neiman Marcus luxury department store opens in Dallas, Texas.
• September 29 – A foundation stone is laid for the Washington National Cathedral; construction will not be fully completed until 1990.

• October 1 – Office of the Superintendent of Prisons and Prisoners established within Department of Justice.
• October 22 – Panic of 1907: A bank run forces New York's Knickerbocker Trust Company to suspend operations.
• October 24 – A major American financial crisis is averted when J. P. Morgan, E. H. Harriman, James Stillman, Henry Clay Frick, and other Wall Street financiers create a $25,000,000 pool to invest in the shares on the plunging New York Stock Exchange, ending the bank panic of 1907, a move which ultimately leads to establishment of the Federal Reserve System.
• November 3 – President Roosevelt approves the takeover of the Tennessee Coal, Iron and Railroad Company by J. P. Morgan's U.S. Steel company in the wake of the panic of 1907.
• November 7 – Delta Sigma Pi (a co-ed professional business fraternity) is founded at the School of Commerce, Accounts and Finance of New York University in New York City.
• November 16
  • Indian Territory and Oklahoma Territory are combined to become Oklahoma, which is admitted into the Union as the 46th U.S. state (see History of Oklahoma).
  • Passenger liner RMS Mauretania, the world's largest and fastest at this date, sets out on her maiden voyage from Liverpool (England) to New York.
• November 28 – Johnny Hayes wins the inaugural Yonkers Marathon.
• December 6 – Monongah Mining Disaster: A coal mine explosion kills 362 workers in Monongah, West Virginia.
• December 16 – The Great White Fleet departs Hampton Roads, Virginia on a 14-month circumnavigation of the globe.
• December 18 – Ouachita National Forest is established.
• December 19 – An explosion in a coal mine in Jacobs Creek, Pennsylvania kills 239.
• December 31 – The first electric ball drops in Times Square.^[5]

• Indiana becomes the world's first legislature to place laws permitting compulsory sterilization for eugenic purposes on the statute book.
• The Lockport Powerhouse is built in Illinois.
• The National Rural Education Association is founded in Indiana.^[6]
• The Osage Nation retains mineral rights in reservation lands.

• Progressive Era (1890s–1920s)
• Lochner era (c. 1897–c. 1937)
• Black Patch Tobacco Wars (1904–1909)^[7]
• Great White Fleet voyage (1907–1909)

• November 23 – Yale Bulldogs win their first IAAUS (later NCAA) College Football National Championship

• January 2 – Gordon L. Allott, U.S. Senator from Colorado from 1955 to 1973 (died 1989)
• January 9
  • Eldred G. Smith, patriarch (d. 2013)
  • Earl W. Renfroe, African American orthodontist, educator, and activist (d. 2000)
• January 19 – Paul Fannin, U.S. Senator from Arizona from 1959 to 1965 (died 2002)
• February 3 – James A. Michener, novelist (died 1997)
• February 15 – Cesar Romero, actor (died 1994)
• February 22
  • Sheldon Leonard, screen actor, writer, director and producer (died 1997)
  • Robert Young, actor (died 1998)
• February 25 – Kathryn Wasserman Davis, philanthropist (died 2013)
• February 26 – Dub Taylor, screen character actor (died 1994)
• February 27 – Mildred Bailey, Native American jazz singer (died 1951)
• February 28 – Milton Caniff, cartoonist (died 1988)
• March 4 – Maria Branyas, American-Spanish supercentenarian, oldest known living person from 17 January 2023 to 19 August 2024 (died 2024)
• March 12 – Dorrit Hoffleit, astronomer (died 2007)
• April 21 – Wade Mainer, singer and banjoist (died 2011)
• May 4 – Lincoln Kirstein, cultural figure (died 1996)
• May 11 – Kent Taylor, screen actor (died 1987)
• May 12 – Katharine Hepburn, screen actress (died 2003)
• May 15 – Thomas J. Dodd, U.S. Senator from Connecticut from 1959 to 1971 (died 1971)
• May 15 – Josef Alexander, composer (died 1992)
• May 26 – John Wayne, film actor and director (died 1979)
• May 27 – Rachel Carson, environmental writer (died 1964)
• June 6 – Nate Barragar, American football player and actor (died 1985)
• July 4
  • John Anderson, discus thrower (died 1948)
  • Gordon Griffith, actor, director and producer (died 1958)
  • Howard Taubman, author and critic (died 1996)
• July 7 – Robert A. Heinlein, science fiction author (died 1988)
• August 19 – Thruston Ballard Morton, U.S. Senator from Kentucky from 1957 to 1968 (died 1982)
• August 21 – John G. Trump, electrical engineer, inventor and physicist (died 1985)
• August 29 – Lurene Tuttle, radio actress (died 1986)
• August 30 – John Mauchly, computer scientist (died 1980)
• August 31 – William Shawn, editor of The New Yorker (died 1992)
• September 1 – Walter Reuther, union leader, founded United Auto Workers (died 1970)
• September 17 – Warren E. Burger, 15th Chief Justice of the United States (died 1995)
• September 19 – Lewis F. Powell Jr., Associate Justice of the Supreme Court (died 1998)
• October 22 – Jimmie Foxx, baseball player, coach, and manager (died 1967)
• November 16 – Burgess Meredith, actor (died 1997)
• December 23 – James Roosevelt, businessman and politician (died 1991)
• December 25
  • Cab Calloway, African American jazz singer and bandleader (died 1994)
  • Glenn McCarthy, oil tycoon (died 1988)
  • Rufus P. Turner, African American electronic engineer (died 1982)
• December 26 – Albert Gore Sr., politician and father of Al Gore (died 1998)

• January 2 – Henry R. Pease, U.S. Senator from Mississippi from 1874 to 1875 (born 1835)
• January 24 – Russell A. Alger, U.S. Senator from Michigan from 1902 to 1907 (born 1836)
• February 17 – Henry Steel Olcott, military officer and co-founder of the Theosophical Society (born 1832)
• March 9 – James L. Pugh, U.S. Senator from Alabama from 1880 to 1897 (born 1820)
• April 14 – Frank Manly Thorn, lawyer, politician, government official, essayist, journalist, humorist, inventor and 6th Superintendent of the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey (born 1836)
• April 23 – Alferd Packer, cannibal (born 1842)
• May 1 – Melissa Elizabeth Riddle Banta, poet (born 1834)
• May 4 – John Watts de Peyster, author, philanthropist and soldier (born 1821)
• May 8 – Edmund G. Ross, U.S. Senator from Kansas from 1866 to 1871 (born 1826)
• May 9 – Melissa Elizabeth Banta, poet, travel writer (born 1834)
• May 24 – John Patton, Jr., U.S. Senator from Michigan from 1894 to 1895 (born 1850)
• May 26 – Ida Saxton McKinley, First Lady of the United States (born 1847)
• June 10 – Stephen Bates, sheriff of Vergennes, Vermont (born 1842)
• June 11 – John Tyler Morgan, U.S. Senator from Alabama from 1877 to 1907 (born 1824)
• June 12 – Ellen Russell Emerson, ethnologist (born 1837)
• June 14 – William Le Baron Jenney, architect and civil engineer (born 1832)
• June 21 – Lucien Baker, U.S. Senator from Kansas from 1895 to 1901 (born 1846)
• July 11 – Robert Watt, miner (born 1832)
• July 25 – Peter Anderson, Union Army Medal of Honor recipient (born 1847)
• July 27 – Edmund Pettus, U.S. Senator from Alabama from 1897 to 1907 (born 1821)
• August 1 – Lucy Mabel Hall-Brown, physician and writer (born 1843)
• August 3 – Augustus Saint-Gaudens, Beaux-Arts sculptor (born 1848 in Ireland)
• August 14 – William Birney, Union Army general, abolitionist, attorney and writer (born 1819)
• October 3 – Jacob Nash Victor, railroad builder (born 1835)
• October 8 – Mary Cyrene Burch Breckinridge, Second Lady of the United States (born 1826)
• October 30 – Caroline Dana Howe, author (born 1824)
• November 22 – Asaph Hall, astronomer (born 1829)
• December 7 – Carrie Clark, model, notably of Muriel's Babies cigar box fame
• December 23 – Stephen Mallory II, U.S. Senator from Florida from 1897 to 1907 (born 1848)
• Sarah Gibson Humphreys, author and suffragist (born 1830)

• List of American films of 1907
• Timeline of United States history (1900–1929)

• Media related to 1907 in the United States at Wikimedia Commons