Skip to content

Collections

Notes from the National Park Vagabond – Midwest Archeological Center

Former superintendent of Theodore Roosevelt National Park Valerie Naylor visits the Midwest Archeological Center in Lincoln, Nebraska in search of archival items related to Roosevelt’s Elkhorn Ranch. What did she dig up? This was originally posted to the TR Center blog in September 2018. Several images that accompanied the article were sadly lost in the transition.

One of my National Park Service dream jobs was serving as Superintendent of Scotts Bluff and Agate Fossil Beds National Monuments in western Nebraska from 1999 to 2003. I also had the opportunity to do a special assignment as Associate Regional Director for Natural Resources in the Midwest Regional Office in Omaha in 2013. Nebraska is one of my favorite places.

I usually visit national parks in search of Theodore Roosevelt archives, but not all National Park Service collections are stored in parks. This May, I spent a day at the National Park Service Midwest Archeological Center, in the Robert V. Denney Federal Building in Lincoln, Nebraska. MWAC (M-whack), as we call it, houses collections from many of the national parks in the Midwest region for safekeeping, including some of the collections from Theodore Roosevelt National Park. 

MWAC preserves some of the most significant items from TR’s Elkhorn Ranch, unearthed during archeological excavations in 1957 and 1959. These include a silver mechanical pencil (Who do you think used that item at the Elkhorn Ranch?), saddle cinch rings, eating utensils, and hundreds of bullet casings from a variety of 1880s firearms. Today, we might cringe at the excavation techniques used in 1957, but we are fortunate to have the items well preserved in the safety of MWAC.  

The archival collections include records from the excavations, as well as correspondence related to the Elkhorn Ranch. It’s interesting stuff. As yet, it’s unclear how many of the documents may be duplicates of those we digitized at Theodore Roosevelt National Park, but it is worth capturing everything available to ensure that the TR Center has a complete record of the National Park Service’s Theodore Roosevelt archives. 

I only got half way through the files of documents, so I get to return to Nebraska’s capital soon to do some more digging and digitizing.  Nebraska is a great state, often underrated, and Lincoln is a beautiful and fun city.  I look forward to my return.

In this week’s blog post, Valerie Naylor, former superintendent of Theodore Roosevelt National Park, returns to the National Park Service Midwest Archeological Center in search of material related to the excavation of TR’s Elkhorn Ranch site. This was originally posted to the TR Center blog in October 2019. Several images that accompanied the article were sadly lost in the transition.

This week’s blog post is brought to you by Valerie Naylor, former superintendent of Theodore Roosevelt National Park and 35-year veteran of the National Park Service. She has been traveling the country hunting down TR-related collections in parks dedicated by him. Recently, she made a return visit to the National Park Service Midwest Archeological Center in search of more material.

Lincoln, the capital of Nebraska, is a great university town, so I was happy to have a “Theodore Roosevelt Center Excuse” to spend a couple of nights there in June as part of a road trip from South Dakota to Tennessee. After a long, cold, snowy, wet spring in the Black Hills, it was wonderful to be in warm, sunny Lincoln. I always camp in town, in a 50-year-old campground that is an oasis between busy highways.   

The National Park Service Midwest Archeological Center is in the Robert V. Denney Federal Building in Lincoln, a highly secure facility. MWAC (M-whack), as we call it, safeguards collections from many of the national parks in the Midwest Region, including the archeological collections and associated documents from Theodore Roosevelt National Park. 

We are fortunate to have some unique items excavated from TR’s Elkhorn Ranch site preserved in the safety of MWAC. The archival collections include records from archeological excavations of the Elkhorn Ranch in 1957 and 1959, as well as related correspondence.

I spent a day with the MWAC archives in May 2018, but there were so many documents that I was only able to scan half of the files. At the time, it was unclear how many of the documents were duplicates of those we digitized at Theodore Roosevelt National Park a decade ago. The TR Center staff processed the documents I scanned last year, so now we know that most of the pages are not duplicate records. I made sure to finish scanning the 192 remaining pages this trip, so I could close the book on the documents in Lincoln. I will have to find another excuse to stop there again soon.

To explore everything our partners have contributed (and Valerie has scanned) for the Theodore Roosevelt Digital Library related to the Elkhorn Ranch, from Roosevelt’s own papers to the archeological reports, click here.