Theodore Roosevelt: His Places in the World; His Place in History - PDF document

Theodore Roosevelt: His Places in the World; His Place in History Hello, and greetings from North Dakota! My name is Erik Johnson, and I am the digital library coordinator and archivist here at the Theodore Roosevelt Center at Dickinson State University. How is everyone doing today? [ Answers hopefully ] Good, good. Well, I’m excited to be here to talk to you a little bit about Theodore Roosevelt and take a look at some of the primary sources we have. Just to give you a little background about where I work before I jump into talking about Theodore Roosevelt, the Theodore Roosevelt Center is a digital library that aims to collect and digitize any and all documents related to Theodore Roosevelt. The bulk of our materials are from the Library of Congress ’s collection of Theodore Roosevelt’s papers, but we’ve also partnered with a variety of institutions and individuals across the country who have an interest in Roosevelt. These include places ranging from Harvard University, where Roosevelt attended college, to a host of sites run by the National Park Service either related to or created by Roosevelt, to Public Libraries, Historical Societies, and individual enthusiasts holding materials created by or related to Roosevelt. While some of our materials are available online in other places, the goal of our digital library is to bring all these items together in one virtual collection and describe them in order to make them much more easily found and used by researchers, scholars, and the general public. Now, actually getting into today’s topic, Theodore Roosevelt was— before, during, and after his presidency — a figure of almost overwhelming vitality who came into contact with locations and events across the globe. Described by one of his friends as a figure of “pure act,” Roosevelt was a naturalist, historian, author, hunter, and cowboy, in addition to being one of the most popular presidents in American history. Through the course of his life, Theodore Roosevelt

touched a massive number of places — not only within the United States, but around the world — building his larger-than-life legacy we see today. Before I get into talking about the areas TR touched and where he left his mark in history, do any of you have guesses about what sorts of places I might talk about? What sorts of places do you think of when you hear the name “Theodore Roosevelt?” [May hear guesses like Mount Rushmore? San Juan Hill? Panama?] All right, those are all great! I heard a few people already mention a couple of the places I’m going to talk about! Now, If we had all the time in the world, we could go on for hours about all the places that Theodore Roosevelt went during his life, or where he is remembered today, but … we don’t have all day, so I made up a list of just a few of the places that I thought were the most important, interesting, or just a little less well known than others to talk about today. To start, I thought I’d begin more or less chronologically with the Badlands of North Dakota, which was significant not only in Roosevelt’s personal life, but which still claims strong ties to him today. Theodore Roosevelt is frequently quoted as having said that he would not have been president had it not been for his experience in North Dakota, and that it was in western North Dakota that the “romance of [his] life began.” Roosevelt first visited the Badlands in 1883, at a time when traveli ng to the West to hunt buffalo was a trendy thing for “dudes from New York” to do, and when the Dakota badlands were in the midst of a cattle boom. While hunting buffalo during this first visit to the badlands, Roosevelt was attracted to the prospect of investing in cattle ranching, and contracted some men to stock and run a cattle ranch for him before he returned to New York to serve as an assemblyman. More than simply being attracted to the potential profits of cattle ranching, however, Roosevelt fell in love with the land itself, with an acquaintance of Roosevelt later writing of Roosevelt’s “wild enthusiasm over the Bad

Lands ” and that “ it had taken root in the congenial coil of his consciousness, like an ineradicable, creeping plant, as it were, to thrive and permeate it thereafter, causing him more and more to think the broad gauge terms of nature —of the real earth.” 1 Both of these factors —Roosevelt’s investment in cattle ranching, and his love of the land — would provide him a safe haven to turn to after suffering both political defeat and the tragic deaths of both his wife and mother the following year. In June of 1884, Roosevelt turned to the Badlands, seeking an escape from his painful memories of New York in the solace of the wide open plains. During this period, Roosevelt threw himself into living life as a cowboy, writing “black care rarely sits behind a rider whose pace is fast enough,” and doing everything he could to beat back the sadness and despair that threatened to catch up with him. Much of this involved both riding and hunting, and here we can see a picture of Roosevelt with one of his horses from 1884, as well as a couple pages of his diary, one of which is filled with a list of the various animals that he hunted. As he spent more time here, Roosevelt grew fond of the rough landscape, writing to his sister Bamie that , “it certainly has a desolate, grim beauty of its own, that has a curious fascination for me. The grassy, scantily wooded bottoms through which the winding river flows are bounded by bare, jagged buttes; their fantastic shapes and sharp, steep edges throw the most curious shadows, under the cloudless, glaring sky; and at evening I love to sit out in front of the hut and see their hard, gray outlines gradually growing soft and purple as the flaming sunset by degrees softens and dies away; while my days I spend generally alone, riding through the lonely rolling prairie and broken lands.” 2 So, you can definitely see that this sort of landscape touched something in Roosevelt, for him to have waxed poetic on the 1 Morris, Rise, 223. 2 https://www.theodorerooseveltcenter.org/Research/Digital-Library/Record?libID=o279999

sublimities of the landscape at such length, and indeed here and later in his life, Roosevelt was deeply moved by the beauty and majesty of natural landscapes. Over the next couple years, Roosevelt started shifting back towards living in the East, but still spent a great deal of time in the Badlands, and was proud of his accomplishments there. Even after marrying his second wife Edith and resuming elements of his life in the New York, he continued to return to the Badlands to go on hunting trips for many years. While Roosevelt had already begun to develop a reputation even before he turned to ranching in North Dakota, this period of his life would st ick with him, as his “cowboy” image would frequently surface. After assuming office in the wake of McKinley’s death, for example, Mark Hanna remarked “Now look, that damned cowboy is President of the United States.” Here we can see a couple of the ways th is has surfaced both during Roosevelt’s lifetime and after, with Roosevelt appearing in advertisements, political cartoons, or in articles that TR himself wrote. North Dakota played an important role in the life of Theodore Roosevelt, and it is also an important place in how he is remembered today. One of the things that Theodore Roosevelt is known for is his efforts promoting conservation, establishing the United States Forest Service (USFS) and establishing a large number of national forests, parks, and monuments. Taking all of this into account, it shouldn’t come as too great of a surprise that the area where Roosevelt once lived and ranched is now a part of the Theodore Roosevelt National Park, and that it is the only national park named after a single person. Beginning its existence as several regional parks worked by the Civilian Conservation Corps, the Theodore Roosevelt National Park now consists of three distinct units (the northern and southern units, as well as a third unit where Roosevelt's Elkhorn Ranch was located), and memorializes both Roosevelt’s experiences living and ranching in the Badlands, as well as his