President Roosevelt's Maltese Cross Cabin
The most strenuous of all presidents, President Theodore Roosevelt was very different from most. He read a book a day, climbed the Matterhorn on his honeymoon, rafted down the Amazon when he was a middle age man, and had energy so uncontrollable that he rocked himself all around his room on his rocking chair! What people don't realize is that Roosevelt was not only an outdoorsman, but was an intellectual too- he wrote forty books, over 150,000 letters, and a serious political strategist. He had huge drive, and thirst for adventure that was quite unrivaled. It is this combination of intellectual curiosity and raw ambition that is pretty rare, and as such, I paid a visit to his ranch at Theodore Roosevelt National Park in North Dakota.
Yellowstone had become the first national park when Teddy was a young man. Although the national park had been established, there was little federal oversight on maintaining the park as only local army leaders would maintain them, not park rangers. Together Roosevelt and Gifford Pinchot, the first US forester, decided they would change things. The conservation leader of the US, Teddy was known for doing a ton without Congressional approval - 150 million acres of national forest by executive order, created the National Wildlife Refuge system and named the first 51, he signed the Reclamation Act and signed the first 24 projects, signed the National Monuments and Antiquities Act- starting with Devils Tower (which I had camped out by earlier yesterday) and named the first 21. And doubling the number of national parks from five to ten.
Perhaps the most important story about Teddy Roosevelt, or the one that I think of the most, is that between April and June of 1903. Roosevelt had ended a difficult legislative season and decided to make the longest presidential road trip of any president before that time. His plan was to spend 2 weeks in Yellowstone with John Burrows and then go to several states to give speeches. But in early May he ended up at the South Rim of the Grand Canyon. He heard that there were plans from the Santa Fe railroad people to make a hotel complex and install a railroad spur, lay tracks. Peering over the rim he said the following:
“Leave it as it is. You cannot improve on it. The ages have been at work on it, and man can only mar it. What you can do is to keep it for your children, your children’s children, and for all who come after you, as one of the great sights which every American if he can travel at all should see....Keep the forests in the same way. Preserve the forests by use; preserve them for the ranchman and the stockman, for the people of the Territory, for the people of the region round about. Preserve them for that use, but use them so that they will not be squandered, that they will not be wasted, so that they will be of benefit to the Arizona of 1953 as well as the Arizona of 1903.”
He tried to make the Grand Canyon a National Park, but House of Representatives Speaker Joseph Cannon famously opposed this and said, "not one cent for scenery."
Roosevelt was pissed and did what any logical person would have done. He made the Grand Canyon a national monument and set aside 828,000 acres of land overnight. The Grand Canyon became a national park in 1919, the year that Roosevelt died.
I spent most of my time hiking up where Teddy and his group of ranchmen like Bill Sewall and Wilmot Dow would ride. I'd highly recommend the Wind Canyon and Ridgeline trail, you might even run into a couple bison holding up traffic!
