Theodore Roosevelt’s Footprint on North Dakota
By Clay S. Jenkinson

Theodore Roosevelt lived in Dakota Territory on and off for about four years. Later in life, he tended to exaggerate the amount of time he spent in what is now North Dakota. If you actually add up the total number of days he spent here, it doesn’t come to much more than a year altogether. But the impact of his Dakota experience on his adult character and outlook was huge. All North Dakotans know that Roosevelt said he would never have been President of the United States were it not for the time he spent here. He meant it.

In North Dakota Roosevelt underwent a transformation from high-strung, snobbish, sickly exemplar of the eastern establishment to the American embodiment of the strenuous life, and in North Dakota Roosevelt realized that people who were not born into privileged lives were no less worthy of respect than their counterparts at Harvard or New York’s most exclusive social clubs. That’s what he took from North Dakota.

Roosevelt also left his impact on North Dakota. The greatest conservationist in Presidential history, Roosevelt altogether designated some 230,000,000 acres nationwide as National Parks, National Wildlife Refuges, National Monuments, National Game Preserves, and, above all, National Forests. There was even a National Forest in North Dakota at one time.

Lately I’ve been trying to assess the Roosevelt “footprint” on North Dakota. Here’s what I have come up with so far.

Wildlife Refuges

On March 14, 1903, Roosevelt invented the National Wildlife Refuge system by executive order alone. At the time he called these acreages federal bird sanctuaries. Informed that the bird population (egrets and pelicans) of Pelican Island in the Indian River in Florida was in danger of being wiped out by hat-feather hunters, Roosevelt impulsively asked his Attorney General Philander Knox if any law enabled him to designate federal bird sanctuaries. Knox said no such law existed. Roosevelt responded by asking if any law prevented him from naming sanctuaries. No, said Knox. “Very well, then I so declare it.”

Roosevelt named the first 51 National Wildlife Refuges. Today the system includes 547 refuges in all fifty states, with a total acreage approaching 100 million acres. Although Alaska, naturally enough, has the most NWR acreage, North Dakota has more National Wildlife Refuges than any other state (63).

Two of Roosevelt’s 51 National Wildlife Refuges were established in North Dakota. First came Stump Lake in 1905, during the first year of Roosevelt’s second term. It consists of just 27 federally-protected acres. Stump Lake, located in Nelson County, is an adjunct of Devils Lake, and under extreme high water conditions it is a feeder source of the Sheyenne River.

Chase Lake was designated in 1908. It comprises 4385 acres. Among other things, Chase Lake is the largest breeding colony for the North American white pelican. In recent years, pelican numbers at Chase Lake have fluctuated wildly, a source of great perplexity to the wildlife management community.

In a sense, the other 61 National Wildlife Refuges in North Dakota can be considered part of Theodore Roosevelt’s conservation legacy. The majority of the post-TR refuges were designated during the New Deal by his fifth cousin, and the husband of his niece Eleanor, Franklin D. Roosevelt.

National Forests

In 1891 Congress passed a law enabling the President to create forest reserves from the public domain by executive order. Presidents Harrison, Cleveland, and McKinley together had designated only 50 million acres of what we now call National Forests. Roosevelt not only designated 100 million acres of National Forest in 21 states during the course of his 7 year, 171 day Presidency. He also named his friend Gifford Pinchot as the first U.S. Forester, and, with Pinchot, managed to transfer the nation’s forests to the U.S. Department of Agriculture on the principle that they should be regarded as renewable resources that should be treated with the same husbandry as America’s farmlands.

Roosevelt designated one national forest in North Dakota. Dakota National Forest was designated on November 24, 1908. It consisted of 22 sections (14,000 acres) in the vicinity of the columnar junipers and the burning coal vein near today’s Logging Camp Ranch northwest of Amidon, North Dakota.

The Dakota National Forest was disbanded in 1917 during the Wilson administration. Most of the acreage was eventually absorbed into the Little Missouri National Grasslands, which are administered by the U.S. Forest Service.

National Parks

When Roosevelt became the 26th President of the United States on September 14, 1901, there were five national parks: Yellowstone (1872), Yosemite, Sequoia, and General Grant (1890), and Mount Rainier (1899). General Grant National Park was absorbed into the new King’s Canyon National Park in 1940.

Roosevelt added five national parks to the system: Crater Lake, Oregon, May 22, 1902; Wind Cave, South Dakota, January 9, 1903; Sully’s Hill, North Dakota, June 2, 1904; Mesa Verde, Colorado, June 29, 1906; and Platt National Park, Oklahoma, June 29, 1906. Platt National Park was absorbed by Chickasaw National Recreation Area in 1976.

According to one National Park historian, “Sully's Hill was a rolling North Dakota prairie with almost no other National Park qualities, and was declassified in 1931.” Today it is known as Sully’s Hill National Game Preserve. It consists of 1674 acres of marsh and wooded hills located on the south edge of the main pool of Devils Lake, near the town of Ft. Totten, North Dakota. Among other things, Sully’s Hill is the home of 20-30 American bison. Theodore Roosevelt never visited the site. Some National Park historians regard Sully’s Hill National Park as piece of pork barrel favoritism by Roosevelt.

Today North Dakota has one national park (in three units) and two national historic sites. Theodore Roosevelt National Park was authorized in 1947 as America’s only National Memorial Park and upgraded in 1978 to full National Park status. It consists of three units: the south unit, headquartered at Medora, the north unit, near Watford City, and the Elkhorn Ranch Unit (218 acres), thirty fives north of Medora on the west bank of the Little Missouri River. Total acreage for Theodore Roosevelt National Park is 70,447.

Roosevelt had nothing to do with the creation of Theodore Roosevelt National Park. He left North Dakota more or less permanently when he became William McKinley’s second Vice President in 1900, though he made a number of brief trips to the badlands during the last 19 years of his life. Roosevelt died on January 6, 1919, fully 28 years before the creation of the national park named in his honor. The two main units of Theodore Roosevelt National Park protect landscapes that Roosevelt frequented in his hunts and during his 35 mile commute from Medora to his Elkhorn Ranch. The Maltese Cross Ranch, seven miles south of Medora, is privately owned. Roosevelt’s best connection to the north unit is his pursuit and arrest of three boat thieves in March and April 1886, near the mouth of Cherry Creek (east of the park). The only true Roosevelt property in Theodore Roosevelt National Park is the 218-acre Elkhorn Ranch Unit, which includes the acreage on which Roosevelt’s cabin and outbuildings were located. A few depressions of the Elkhorn foundations can still be discerned at the site.

Fort Union Trading Post National Historic Site and Knife River Indian Villages National Historic Site extend the National Park Service presence in North Dakota. Roosevelt had nothing to do with either site, though it is conceivable that he might eventually have designated Knife River a National Monument.

National Monuments

Congress passed the Antiquities Act on June 8, 1906. It authorized Presidents to proclaim "historic landmarks, historic and prehistoric structures, and other objects of historic or scientific interest" as national monuments. These were intended to include the smallest acreage compatible with permanent preservation of key archaeological and historic landmarks. The Antiquities Act did not contemplate the sequestering of large parcels of land. Roosevelt named the first eighteen National Monuments, including one giant, Grand Canyon National Monument, 828,000 acres. None of them are in North Dakota. The nearest of Roosevelt’s National Monuments is Devils Tower in northeastern Wyoming, which he designated on September 24, 1906.

Reclamation Projects

The Newlands Reclamation Act became law on June 17, 1902. As the twentieth century began, government-funded irrigation projects in the American West were regarded as one key element of a national conservation program. The idea was to “make the desert bloom” by lifting water up out of the streams of the arid lands and distributing them onto Jeffersonian farms nearby. Roosevelt was an irrigation enthusiast, though he worried about what he regarded as socialist elements in the pioneering legislation put forward by Nevada Senator Francis G. Newlands.

Roosevelt designated the first 24 irrigation projects, one of them in North Dakota. The Lower Yellowstone Project was authorized on May 10, 1904. It was designed to lift water out of the Yellowstone river between Sydney, Montana, and its confluence with the Missouri west of Williston, North Dakota.

Irrigation water first became available in 1909. At that point 62 miles of canals had been constructed, along with 74 miles of laterals, for a total irrigation capacity of 40,535 acres. At the time 424 farms participated in the project. As the twenty first century begins, the Lower Yellowstone Project provides irrigation water for 52,133 acres on the west bank of the Yellowstone River. Water is diverted from the Yellowstone River 18 miles downriver from Glendive, Montana, and the principal canal is now 71.6 miles long. One principal use of the diverted water is the production of sugar beets. Roosevelt never visited the Lower Yellowstone infrastructure.

Today North Dakota farmers irrigate approximately 160,000 acres statewide. Although only a small percentage of this total involves U.S. Bureau of Reclamation projects, all of these diversions are one legacy of Roosevelt’s belief that irrigation would conserve farmlands in the arid region, and stabilize rural communities. The largest irrigation project in North Dakota history, Garrison Diversion, was one projected benefit of the Pick-Sloan Plan that erected a series of mainstem and tributary dams in the Missouri River basin. Garrison Diversion was authorized in 1965. Although more than half a billion dollars have been spent on construction of the Snake Creek Pumping Plant, the McClusky and New Rockford Canals, and other installations, no significant irrigation has resulted from more than four decades of legislative maneuvering.

In a broad sense, the Little Missouri and Sheyenne River National Grasslands can be considered part of the Roosevelt footprint in North Dakota. Although the National Grasslands were established long after Roosevelt’s death, they extend federal conservation protection to Great Plains grazing lands that Roosevelt feared—as early as 1886-87—were being overgrazed. Roosevelt was not afraid to employ the federal government as a land and resource steward. He did not believe that local populations were capable of the best stewardship without the supervisory hand of the national government. When he visited Beach, North Dakota, a few months before his death, he told the local stockmen that they were overstocking the grass. For this he was publicly criticized.

Clay Jenkinson