Your TR Source

Dickinson State University

Dickinson State University (DSU), located on the edge of the North Dakota Badlands, strives to be a premier university in the Upper Great Plains. DSU is also the physical home of the Theodore Roosevelt Center.

To celebrate the centennial year of Theodore Roosevelt’s birth in 1958, a Theodore Roosevelt Centennial Commission was created by the United States House of Representatives. The Commission worked with the Theodore Roosevelt Association to coordinate activities to commemorate the anniversary of Roosevelt’s life. In observation of the centennial, Dickinson State University, then Dickinson State Teacher’s College, organized a symposium to honor Roosevelt’s memory and to give recognition to the role North Dakota played in his life.  The symposium theme was Responsible Citizenship, and the keynote speakers included Senator John F. Kennedy, Howard K. Beale, Hermann H. Hagedorn, Secretary of the Interior Fred A. Seaton, and Theodore Roosevelt McKeldin.

The 1958 Theodore Roosevelt Centennial Symposium collection housed at DSU was digitized and cataloged by TR Center staff and an intern working on-site. The collection includes manuscripts, letters, pictures, newspaper articles, magazine clippings, comics, mementos, speeches and books about the image, life and legacy of Theodore Roosevelt. Highlights in the collection are a copy of a handwritten autobiography and other manuscripts authored by Theodore Roosevelt. Some of the latter are titled “The Home Ranch,” “Frontier Types,” “Sheriff’s Work on a Ranch,” and “The Ranchman’s Rifle on the Crag and Prairie.”  The collection includes extensive documentation on the Theodore Roosevelt Centennial Symposium hosted by Dickinson State Teacher’s College along with photographs and articles about Roosevelt and his life.

For full details on the 1958 Theodore Roosevelt Centennial Symposium collection, please see the Finding Aid.

See below to view documents from this collection in the Theodore Roosevelt Digital Library.