Theodore Roosevelt National Park - The Cattleman

The year 1884 was devastating to Teddy Roosevelt. His wife and his mother died on the same day in February. In June a disastrous confrontation at the Republican Convention left his promising political career in ruins. Disheartened, defeated, and grieving, he retired from public life and returned to the badlands, intent on making a new life for himself as an outdoorsman and cattle rancher. As it turned out, he was to live this new life for only two years, but they were crucial years in his development as a man -- and through him, in America's development as a nation.

Roosevelt bought a second ranch, the Elkhorn. Faced with new challenges, he quickly regained the joyous self-confidence that was his lifelong hallmark. At first, with his owlish spectacles and eastern mannerisms, Teddy was an object of derision to the rough-edged cowboys who worked for him. During one of his first roundups, when he ordered a cowboy to "hasten forward quickly there!" every man within earshot was convulsed with laughter. So hilarious did the westerners find the phrase that they began to use it themselves, and it remained for years a badlands idiom.

It was not long before the pluck that had made a friend of Joe Ferris on that first bison hunt began to impress others. Teddy earned the respect of his men with hard, dirty labor. At least once, he had to earn the respect of strangers with his fists. Told and retold around bars and campfires was the story of his bare-fisted knockout of a drunken bully with a revolver in each hand who had tried to intimidate "Four-eyes."

Another tale -- one you can still hear from old-timers whose grandparents claimed they were witnesses -- has to do with Teddy's capture of three rustlers who had stolen his boat to escape the law. He and two friends chased the desperadoes for 100 miles amid crushing blocks of ice during the spring thaw on the Little Missouri. Then, instead of hanging the thieves from the handiest tree as was the custom, Teddy brought them back for the law to deal with. The journey to the nearest jail involved guarding the prisoners night and day for a week on the river, followed by a 45-mile wagon trek through ankle-deep mud. (The tied-up prisoners rode; Roosevelt walked, rifle at the ready.) When he arrived, caked with mud, his clothes were in shreds and his feet a mass of blisters. But he had upheld the law.

Such rigorous displays of integrity earned the respect of the frontier community as a whole. Willy-nilly, Roosevelt found himself a public figure again. He was elected to lead area-wide roundups, to chair the Little Missouri Stockmen's Association, and to represent badlands cattlemen in regional meetings.

The ranchers had real problems to take to such meetings. They knew that the ever-increasing influx of outside herds would destroy the range through overgrazing. But there was no legal remedy; they did not own the land and now laws existed for its protection. That the end had to come was obvious. It came sooner than anyone expected. In 1886 a cyclical dry summer destroyed the depleted pastures. It was followed by a bitterly cold winter, when deep snows melted and refroze into ice many inches thick. The starving cattle had little resistance to the fierce, cold winds, and when spring arrived 75 percent of them were dead. The marquis's slaughterhouse closed, and although Roosevelt tried to rebuild his herds, the loss was too great.

Meanwhile, eastern politics had beckoned; Roosevelt had been asked to run for mayor of New York. Though he lost the election, he found himself again in the thick of the political wars that he loved. Thanks to his time in the badlands he entered the fray with renewed vigor and a new depth of commitment.

He never forgot the badlands, and returned to them often. Nor did he ever forget the sights of dwindling brown grass or of frozen cattle; nor the bitter fact of vanishing wildlife. He had learned the hard way the cost of abusive exploitation. A skilled writer, he published several books that made the public more aware of the need to preserve the wilderness and its creatures.

As president of the United States, Theodore Roosevelt approved 5 national parks, 16 national monuments, and 51 national wildlife refuges. He set aside over 86 million acres of national mineral reserves and 125 million acres of national forests. His stated goal, to manage the nation's limited resources in a wise way for the public good, marked a turning point in the history of the United States -- indeed, in the history of the world. Northing could have pleased him more than to know that the ravines and prairies he loved are now preserved in memory of his name.