I t was still the Wild West in those days, the Far West…a land of vast silent spaces, of
lonely rivers, and of plains where the wild game stared at the passing horseman. It was
a land of scattered ranches, of herds of long-horned cattle, and of reckless riders who
unmoved looked in the eyes of life or of death. In that land we led a free and hardy life, with
horse and with rifle. We worked under the scorching midsummer sun, when the wide plains
shimmered and wavered in the heat; and we knew the freezing misery of riding night guard
round the cattle in the late fall round-up. In the soft springtime the stars were glorious in our
eyes each night before we fell asleep; and in the winter we rode through blinding blizzards, when
the driven snow-dust burned our faces. There were monotonous days, as we guided the trail
cattle or the beef herds, hour after hour, at the slowest of walks; and minutes or hours teeming
with excitement as we stopped stampedes or swam the herds across rivers treacherous with
quicksands or brimmed with running ice. We knew toil and hardship and hunger and thirst; and
we saw men die violent deaths as they worked among the horses and cattle, or fought in evil
feuds with one another; but we felt the beat of hardy life in our veins, and ours was the glory of
work and the joy of living.
Theodore Roosevelt, Autobiography, 1913 “In Cowboy Land”
T H E O D O R E R O O S E V E LT C E N T E R 1
If the proper study of mankind
is man, then the proper study of a
Nation is its own history, and
all true patriots should encourage
in every way the associations
which record the great deeds, and
the successes and failures alike, of
the forefathers of their people.
Address to the State Historical Society
of Wisconsin, January 24, 1893
D I C K I N S O N STAT E U N I V E R S I T Y2
T H E O D O R E R O O S E V E LT C E N T E R 3
We have a dream that I want to reveal to you. Because we are located near the edge of Theodore Roosevelt’s beloved North Dakota badlands, Dickinson State University has launched a bold and ambitious TR Initiative. We plan to bring TR’s intellectual legacy home to North Dakota, and through the power of the Internet we want to share TR with the world.
During the last three years, we have hosted annual national symposia on different aspects of Roosevelt’s life and achievements. Since 2000 our Theodore Roosevelt Honors Leadership Program has attracted exceptionally bright undergraduates to DSU. We have published a book on Roosevelt and the North Dakota badlands and another is in the works to document DSU’s celebration of the Theodore Roosevelt Centennial in 1958, an event that included Senator John F. Kennedy as a presenter.
We also have undertaken a herculean effort to digitize all of the papers of Theodore Roosevelt and to make them available to the world on a well-organized and searchable Web portal. We have entered into a formal agreement with the Library of Congress to digitize its vast Roosevelt holdings, and with the National Park Service and other institutions. The Library of Congress’ 250,000 Roosevelt items are now in our possession within an electronic storage device the size of a modest suitcase. Our challenge now is to process and index these documents, and to present them in an interesting and entertaining way that will appeal to a range of curious users, from K-12 schoolchildren to biographers and academic specialists.
To be sure, these are significant initiatives and exciting opportunities for Dickinson State University. Moreover, this is an important moment for western North Dakota. And though we are very proud of what we already have accomplished, we are just getting started.
Therefore, we are developing a Theodore Roosevelt Center on the campus of Dickinson State University. The Roosevelt Center will be a museum, a research center, a convening center, a traditional Roosevelt library, and the home and processing center for the digital Roosevelt archives. In the pages that follow, you will learn more about these initiatives. We know you will be as excited as we are about what one of our national advocates has called our “sensible but audacious” plans.
Dickinson State University has received national attention for the Roosevelt initiative we have so far undertaken. We believe the Theodore Roosevelt Center will receive wide recognition and respect as a regional and even national home for Roosevelt studies and “publications.”
Soon you will be able to explore the Roosevelt papers on our Web site: www.theodorerooseveltcenter.com. It is our hope that by 2012, you will be able to sit in our Roosevelt Center Reading Room, drinking in the spirit and the immense intellectual output of one of America’s most remarkable presidents. As Roosevelt would say: What a dee-lightful prospect!
Thank you for your continued support and dedication to Dickinson State University.
Sincerely,
Richard J. McCallum, Ph.D.Dickinson State University President
Welcome to the Theodore Roosevelt Center
T H E O D O R E R O O S E V E LT C E N T E R 3Left: Artist’s conceptual rendering of the Roosevelt Reading Room.
D I C K I N S O N STAT E U N I V E R S I T Y4
The great speeches of statesmen, and the great writings of historians, can live only if they possess the
deathless quality that inheres in all great literature. The greatest literary historian must of necessity be
a master of the science of history, a man who has at his finger-tips all the accumulated facts from the
treasure-houses of the past. But he must also possess the power to marshal what is dead so that before our
eyes it lives again. Theodore Roosevelt, Address to the American Historical Association, 1912
D I C K I N S O N STAT E U N I V E R S I T Y4
T H E O D O R E R O O S E V E LT C E N T E R 5
A MuseuM
In the Theodore Roosevelt Center, you will come face to face with physical objects closely associated with
Theodore Roosevelt, particularly items from his time in the Dakota badlands. The State Historical Society of
North Dakota and other institutions have agreed to place items on loan to the Center once we have established
dedicated and secure exhibit space.
The Roosevelt Center will exhibit large format Roosevelt cartoons, broadsides, newspapers, and a wide range of
memorabilia, from Roosevelt’s clothing and firearms to manuscript pages from his many books and articles. The
Center will feature our own and traveling exhibits, with a particular emphasis on Roosevelt and Conservation and
Roosevelt and the American West. Visitors will be able to explore the world of Theodore Roosevelt on interactive
touch screen kiosks, featuring 3-D “handling” of guns, badges, bronzes, and other physical objects.
The Center will also exhibit materials relating to the early cattle industry in western Dakota Territory. The Roosevelt
Center has already received on loan a remarkable collection of arrowheads, spearheads, ordnance, and other items
from the Diamond C Ranch at the base of the Killdeer Mountains. The ranch has an important Roosevelt connection.
It was here, in April 1886, that Roosevelt borrowed a wagon to transport three boat thieves to justice in Dickinson.
The Alick Dvirnak Family Collection helps establish the link between TR and one of the most historically important
ranches in North Dakota.
Elizabeth Lucas of Bismarck, North Dakota, recently loaned the Roosevelt Center items relating to her grandfather,
former North Dakota Governor John Burke. Burke attended the 1908 first-ever White House Governors’
Conference, called by Roosevelt to address the nation’s conservation needs. “Honest John” Burke later broke
with Roosevelt during the Bull Moose campaign of 1912.
The Roosevelt Center will seek loans and gifts of documents, photographs, newspapers, land deeds,
reminiscences, memorabilia, and other items relating to Roosevelt himself and the frontier world
of western Dakota Territory that shaped his mature consciousness so profoundly.
Left: Roosevelt created the National Wildlife Refuge System by executive order on March 13, 1903. He was America’s greatest conservation president. This spectacles case probably saved Roosevelt’s life when he was shot by enraged citizen John Schrank on October 14, 1912.
The Theodore Roosevelt Center is…
D I C K I N S O N STAT E U N I V E R S I T Y6
T H E O D O R E R O O S E V E LT C E N T E R 7
A ReAding RooM
Imagine a library reading room that makes you wonder whether Theodore Roosevelt is about to walk in
holding a book in one hand and one of his massive cups of coffee in the other. Imagine strong leather and
wood furniture, reading lamps, sturdy bookshelves, bronze statues of horsemen, stampedes, and mustangs,
paintings of western landscapes, and portraits of Theodore Roosevelt.
The reading room will feel like an island of Theodore Roosevelt’s world, nestled in a
21st century library and learning center.
Readers of all ages will find a satisfying and informative place to read and reflect in the
Theodore Roosevelt Center. The bookshelves will be full of biographies of Roosevelt,
studies of his life and achievement, histories of the cattle industry and American
conservation, portraits of America at the dawn of the 20th century, and of course, the
books, articles, and letters of the “writingest President of the United States.”
Scholars, researchers, K-12 and college students, tourists, curious citizens, and visiting
Roosevelt Research Fellows will gather in the reading room to pursue their studies and
share ideas about one of the most extraordinary men of American history.
The Theodore Roosevelt Center is…
D I C K I N S O N STAT E U N I V E R S I T Y8
The great historian of the future will have
easy access to innumerable facts patiently
gathered by tens of thousands of investigators,
whereas the great historian of the past had
very few facts, and often had to gather most of
these himself. The great historian of the future
cannot be excused if he fails to draw on the
vast storehouses of knowledge that have been
accumulated, if he fails to profit by the wisdom
and work of other men, which are now the
common property of all intelligent men.
Address to the American Historical Association, 1912
T H E O D O R E R O O S E V E LT C E N T E R 9
A digitAl libRARy
Every president since Herbert Hoover has a national Presidential Library where his papers are stored
and interpreted. The papers of presidents before Hoover are scattered among libraries and museums
throughout the United States. Theodore Roosevelt was, up to his time, the most prolific creator of
presidential documents. The great bulk of his papers repose at the Library of Congress and Harvard
University, with smaller collections scattered throughout the country.
In partnership with the Library of Congress, the National Park Service and others, the Theodore Roosevelt Center
has begun a profoundly ambitious project. We intend to create a comprehensive Theodore Roosevelt digital library.
Visitors to the online library will be able to view letters, diary entries, notes, cartoons, scrapbooks, newspaper columns,
photographs, and magazine articles by and about Theodore Roosevelt. Visitors will also be able to view films in which
Theodore Roosevelt makes an appearance and listen to audio recordings that feature his famously falsetto voice.
The digital Theodore Roosevelt library will be immense. The Library of Congress alone houses more than a quarter
million Roosevelt documents, and we have already obtained digitized copies. Theodore Roosevelt National Park
and five other National Park Service sites related to Roosevelt will be digitizing their holdings, with the support
of a Centennial Challenge grant obtained through the efforts of TRNP Superintendent Valerie Naylor. Many other
collections will be added. Yet all this will be “contained” in North Dakota in digital storage devices no larger than the
trunk in your grandmother’s attic.
Gathering this mountain of Roosevelt materials is an ambitious
goal. Cataloging, indexing, interpreting, and exhibiting this rich
treasury is infinitely more ambitious—and historically important.
Thanks to the electronic revolution, the Roosevelt Papers will be
available to a range of users—from fourth graders to Roosevelt
biographers—with unprecedented ease and clarity of access.
Anyone anywhere (with Internet access) at any time of day or
night, workday or holiday, in Kansas City or Karachi, will be able
to search the papers of one of America’s greatest figures. Dr. James Hutson of the Library of Congress explores the world of Roosevelt at DSU’s first TR kiosk.
T H E O D O R E R O O S E V E LT C E N T E R 9
The Theodore Roosevelt Center is…
D I C K I N S O N STAT E U N I V E R S I T Y1 0
Scholarship that consists in mere learning, but finds no expression in production, may be of interest
and value to the individual, just as ability to shoot well at clay pigeons may be of interest and value
to him, but it ranks no higher unless it finds expression in achievement. From the standpoint of
the nation, and from the broadest standpoint of mankind, scholarship is of worth chiefly when it is
productive, when the scholar not merely receives or acquires, but gives.
Theodore Roosevelt, Outlook, January 13, 1912
T H E O D O R E R O O S E V E LT C E N T E R 1 1
A Convening spACe
Since 2006, Dickinson State University has hosted an annual Theodore Roosevelt symposium. The third
event in the series, Theodore Roosevelt: The Conservationist in the Arena, brought together scholars,
biographers, conservationists, cattle ranchers, employees of state and national land management agencies,
and citizens from North Dakota and throughout the United States to consider Roosevelt’s place in the
history of American conservation.
The Theodore Roosevelt Center will host annual symposia, lecture series, seminars, and Roosevelt festivals. The
Center will attract the best Roosevelt scholars in the world to western North Dakota. These scholars will share their
insights with a range of audiences, from K-12 students to the adult out of school public. Visiting scholars will also
have the opportunity to visit such “sacred” Roosevelt places as the remote Elkhorn Ranch site, the Maltese Cross
Cabin, and the headwaters of Little Cannonball Creek, where Roosevelt shot his first buffalo in September 1883.
Already Dickinson State University has attracted national attention for its symposia, which combine careful history,
intellectual playfulness, entertainment, and field trips to Roosevelt’s Little Missouri River badlands. Such nationally
renowned scholars as H. W. Brands, John Milton Cooper, Patricia O’Toole, Douglas Brinkley, Donald Worster, Robert
Morgan, and Dan Flores, as well as Roosevelt family scholar and scion Tweed Roosevelt, have spoken at the symposia
and carried away indelible memories of the hospitality they have enjoyed in western North Dakota and the eerie
“Rooseveltiana” of the Elkhorn Ranch and the badlands.
The Theodore Roosevelt Center will continue to attract outstanding Roosevelt scholars to events; publish
proceedings of the best lectures and panel debates; and extend its audience by way of webcasts, podcasts, remote
video participation, documentary radio and film, and transcripts of lectures made available online.
The Theodore Roosevelt Center is…
D I C K I N S O N STAT E U N I V E R S I T Y1 2
T H E O D O R E R O O S E V E LT C E N T E R 1 3
A ReseARCh CenteR
The Theodore Roosevelt Center will be so useful as a repository of Roosevelt documents, books, museum
artifacts, and other materials that scholars and citizens from throughout the United States will want
to visit Dickinson, North Dakota, to learn more about the former president who lived here off and on
between 1883 and 1890. Individuals and groups interested in Roosevelt will find help at the Roosevelt
Center in their quest for a better understanding of his life and times.
The digital archive will be so comprehensive, and so well organized and indexed, that the Roosevelt Center will be
the inevitable portal into all future Theodore Roosevelt studies.
The impact of the Center’s archival activity will be subtle but of immeasurable importance. If every Roosevelt
scholar approaches the 26th president through the Center’s Internet portal, and many Roosevelt scholars visit
Dickinson State University and western North Dakota, future Roosevelt books and articles will be shaped by the
landscape and spirit of place that had so profound and transformative an effect on Roosevelt himself. Everyone
who visits the Web portal will see images of the badlands of North Dakota. Everyone who visits the physical Center
will be encouraged to explore Roosevelt historic sites and the gateway village of Medora.
The Theodore Roosevelt Honors Leadership Program, established at Dickinson State University in 2000, has
heightened interest in Roosevelt on campus and inspired a number of undergraduates to investigate aspects of
Roosevelt’s life. The Center will extend this effort through a grant-funded Theodore Roosevelt Fellows program at
Dickinson State University. The Fellows program will provide stipends, housing, and access to facilities, equipment,
and Roosevelt Center professional staff, to a number of individuals each year. Roosevelt Fellows can be graduate
students, young faculty members, senior scholars, and in some cases, citizens with a strong specific research
interest in Roosevelt. Through this program, Dickinson State University will become the incubator of some of the
next generation of Roosevelt studies.
The Theodore Roosevelt digital archive will be available free anywhere on earth, and Center staff will field inquiries
by phone, fax, and email from any location. But scholars who want to experience the place that mattered most to
Roosevelt after his home on Long Island, to see and walk the land that so transformed and invigorated him—will
visit the Theodore Roosevelt Center and western North Dakota.
Left: Roosevelt and his successor William Howard Taft weather the storm together.
The Theodore Roosevelt Center is…
D I C K I N S O N STAT E U N I V E R S I T Y1 4
T H E O D O R E R O O S E V E LT C E N T E R 1 5
An eConoMiC engine FoR WesteRn noRth dAkotA
When at the height of its activity, the Theodore Roosevelt Center may employ a handful of full-time
professionals, a few dozen part-time employees and a significant number of volunteers. The intellectual
synergy from this team will attract thousands of visitors to western North Dakota every year.
Although the Roosevelt Center will not be a certified national Presidential Library like the Truman Library in
Independence, Missouri, or the Johnson Library at Austin, Texas, at the other end of the Great Plains, it will be
visited by many of the same citizens who plan their vacations to visit such facilities. It will deepen the experience
of Medora and Theodore Roosevelt National Park, and give people from elsewhere a fuller motivation to make
travel plans in North Dakota.
Because Roosevelt is, in every poll of citizens and historians, one of the top ten American presidents, and of course
one of the “Rushmore Four,” the Center will attract large numbers of visitors in a way that the second or first
home of other presidents—Millard Filmore, James Buchanan, Franklin Pierce—never could. In partnership with
Theodore Roosevelt National Park and other Roosevelt sites in North and South Dakota and Montana, including
the federal conservation properties (forests, wildlife refuges, game preserves), the Center will help to complete a
Roosevelt “package” which will attract visitors who might not travel to North Dakota as a single destination.
Cultural (heritage) tourism is widely regarded as the future of tourism in America. People want authenticity,
rigorous history, spirit of place, and the experience of being in touch with, and as much as possible in the
footprints and dust trails of their historical tradition. Visitors to the Theodore Roosevelt Center will be ideal
tourists, who will return to their homes with a positive image of North Dakota and the Great Plains, who will
visit western North Dakota frequently, and who will thereafter always connect Theodore Roosevelt with the Little
Missouri River badlands.
Left: The “engine of progress” at Fargo, North Dakota, in 1903.
The Theodore Roosevelt Center is…
D I C K I N S O N STAT E U N I V E R S I T Y1 6
theodoRe Roosevelt in noRth dAkotA Theodore Roosevelt’s home was Sagamore Hill at Oyster Bay on Long Island. Though he was born in New York
City (1858) and educated at Harvard, Roosevelt built a ramshackle Queen Anne-style house on Long Island at a
location that had long been visited by his family. On the day before he died in 1919, Roosevelt asked his wife Edith,
“I wonder if you will ever know how I love Sagamore Hill?”
Partly to overcome the physical debilities of his childhood, partly to participate in American frontier life before the
end of that colorful era of our history, partly to kill a buffalo before they became (as he expected) extinct, Roosevelt
traveled alone by train to western Dakota Territory in September 1883. He got his buffalo and fell in love with
the rugged and eerie badlands of the Little Missouri River Valley. Before that trip ended, on impulse he invested
$14,000 (a significant part of his net worth) in the Maltese Cross (Chimney Butte) Ranch south of the Northern
Pacific Railroad line. The following year, he returned to the badlands and established a second ranch, the Elkhorn,
35 miles north of the new village of Medora.
D I C K I N S O N STAT E U N I V E R S I T Y1 6
T H E O D O R E R O O S E V E LT C E N T E R 1 7
Roosevelt threw himself with all of his hectic energy into becoming an authentic rancher and “cow boy” (the term
was new and not yet wholly positive) in Dakota Territory. He had the time of his life—knocking out a drunken
gunslinger in a bar, stemming stampedes while accidentally flipping his break-neck horses, confronting an assassin
mano a mano, hunting all the larger game animals of the northern Great Plains, arresting three thieves who stole his
boat and marching them overland to justice in Dickinson, writing books and articles, taking photographs with an
early portable camera, and beginning to develop the conservation consciousness that would make him one of the
most important presidents for the history of the American West.
Altogether Roosevelt spent approximately the equivalent of one year in the Dakota badlands between 1883 and
1887, and he returned a dozen times in the course of the rest of his life, including, in 1890, a visit in which he was
accompanied by his second wife Edith Carow Roosevelt and his sister Corinne.
The Dakota sojourn was one of the greatest adventures of Theodore Roosevelt’s life. But it was not merely a lark.
Roosevelt underwent a physical and spiritual transformation in what became North Dakota. He ceased to be a
prissy and class-conscious New York “dude” and punkinlilly (as one of the local toughs called him) and became the
exemplar of the strenuous life who is now regarded as one of the most extraordinary men and one
of the most colorful presidents in American history.
In 1910, dedicating a library in Fargo, Roosevelt said, “I would never have
become president if it had not been for my experiences in North Dakota.”
Roosevelt’s badlands are still astonishingly beautiful. It is still possible
to find places, particularly at his beloved Elkhorn Ranch, that are little
altered since he left Dakota to resume his national political career.
In 1886, in a Fourth of July speech in Dickinson, Roosevelt said,
“I am, myself, at heart as much a Westerner as an Easterner; I am
proud, indeed, to be considered one of yourselves.”
Roosevelt’s first home was clearly Oyster Bay. But there can be
no doubt that his second home—and the one that captivated his
romantic soul—was the Little Missouri River country in western
North Dakota.
T H E O D O R E R O O S E V E LT C E N T E R 1 7
D I C K I N S O N STAT E U N I V E R S I T Y1 8 D I C K I N S O N STAT E U N I V E R S I T Y1 8
T H E O D O R E R O O S E V E LT C E N T E R 1 9
youR oppoRtunity to pARtiCipAte in MAking histoRy
beCoMe A FRiend oF the theodoRe Roosevelt CenteRExperience the adventure of coming to know Roosevelt. Through regular email updates, stay informed about events and
activities. Receive invitations to special events such as book discussions, “recent discovery” luncheons, and others.
FinAnCiAl suppoRtSignificant financial support is needed to ensure the continued development of the digital library, the museum,
the publications and symposia, and all the other work of the Center. Gifts of any size will make a lasting impact
not only at Dickinson State University but throughout western North Dakota, as the Center fosters cultural and
heritage tourism in the region. Contributions will also advance Roosevelt studies and scholarship in a way not
previously imagined.
digitAl libRARy developMentGathering digital files from various major collections is just the first step in the process of creating a comprehensive
and engaging digital library. The next step is to create descriptive data which will make the documents searchable
and accessible to a wide range of users, from K-12 students and teachers to scholars. Volunteers with an interest in
history and attention to detail will greatly advance this work.
For more information or to make a gift to support the Center, contact us at
Theodore Roosevelt CenterDickinson State University 291 Campus DriveDickinson, ND [email protected] www.theodorerooseveltcenter.com
Left: Roosevelt’s second home, the Elkhorn Ranch cabin on the Little Missouri River north of Medora, North Dakota.
The Theodore Roosevelt Center is…
D I C K I N S O N STAT E U N I V E R S I T Y2 0
theodoRe Roosevelt stAkeholdeRsDickinson State University
Theodore Roosevelt National Park
Theodore Roosevelt Medora Foundation
State Historical Society of North Dakota
North Dakota Cowboy Hall of Fame
theodoRe Roosevelt CenteRAdvisoRy boARdDr. H. W. BrandsDickson Allen Anderson Centennial Professor of HistoryProfessor of GovernmentUniversity of Texas at Austin
Dr. Douglas BrinkleyProfessor of HistoryRice University
Ms. Kathleen DaltonPhillips Academy
Ms. Patricia O’TooleAssociate Professor and Vice-ChairGraduate Writing Division, School of the ArtsColumbia University
Dr. James HutsonChief of the Manuscript DivisionLibrary of Congress
Ms. Valerie NaylorSuperintendentTheodore Roosevelt National Park
Mr. Simon C. Roosevelt
Ms. Claudia BergMuseum and Education DirectorState Historical Society of North Dakota
Mr. Craig ButhodDirectorLouisville Free Public Library System
Dr. Jack RobertsonFoundation LibrarianThomas Jefferson Library
North Dakota photographs by Clay S. Jenkinson. Historical photos courtesy of Theodore Roosevelt Collection, Harvard College Library and the Library of Congress. Memorabilia from the Theodore Roosevelt Birthplace in New York City. Documents courtesy of the Library of Congress.
theodoRe Roosevelt CenteR stAFFClay S. JenkinsonLead Consultant and Theodore Roosevelt Humanities Scholar
Sharon KilzerProject Manager
Do you know what chapter… in all my life… looking back over all of it…
I would choose to remember, were the alternative forced upon me to recall
one portion of it, and to have erased from my memory all other experiences?
I would take the memory of my life on the ranch with its experiences close to
nature and among the men who lived nearest her.
President Theodore Roosevelt to Senator Albert Fall, 1904
Dickinson state University 291 campus Drive Dickinson, north Dakota 58601 1.800.279.4295 www.dickinsonstate.edu