BISMARCK, N.D. – Theodore Roosevelt’s love of the country’s untouched, natural beauty spurred him to create and conserve hundreds of national forests, parks and monuments during his presidency.
His legacy, though, is being preserved digitally.
A devoted group of scholars and Roosevelt admirers has been scanning his papers and artifacts for years and is finalizing a design for a library and museum commemorating the life of the 26th president.
The physical library is expected to open in 2019 in Dickinson, a city of about 20,000 residents about 35 miles east of Theodore Roosevelt National Park, which includes ranchland that once his. However, the library has already made thousands of notes, letters and photographs available online.
The National Archives in Washington, D.C., oversees all presidential libraries from Herbert Hoover on, but any library for a president prior to the 31st, Herbert Hoover, must be built and managed without the help of the federal government.
Roosevelt fell in love with the North Dakota badlands during an 1883 hunting trip, and he returned the following year to raise cattle. He established the Elkhorn Ranch, which sits along the Little Missouri River, 25 miles from Montana’s border.
Organizers hope learning about Roosevelt’s life and experiencing first-hand the raw beauty he saw in the badlands will present visitors with the complete picture of the man in the place that’s often called the “cradle of conservation” and would lead the former president to write: “It was here that the romance of my life began.”
