tr center brochure

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


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.


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



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…


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 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


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.



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.



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.



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.



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.



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.


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


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.



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

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