2021 TR Symposium

Western Scenes, Western Friends

Commemorative Program Book

The Theodore Roosevelt Symposium and Theodore Roosevelt Association Annual Meeting was held virtually. In addition to conversations with our featured speakers – Tim Egan, Duane Jundt, Jeremy Johnston, and Char Miller – we offered a creative virtual tour of Roosevelt’s footprint in North Dakota, including sites in and beyond the Badlands. We will also provided a look at North Dakota’s TR activities, including developments at the Theodore Roosevelt Center, the Theodore Roosevelt Medora Foundation, and the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library.

The symposium theme was TR’s western “arena”—his western travels, western adventures, western friendships, and western conservation policies. Roosevelt’s years in the Dakota badlands transformed him from a physically frail easterner into one of the American West’s champions (and cultural inventors) and opened a much wider world in which Roosevelt sought to find both personal and national renewal. This symposium charted Roosevelt’s encounters with western individuals, western landscapes, western experiences, and the ethos of the American West, and assessed their impact on his life and his presidency.

Schedule

All times are in Mountain Daylight Time. Schedule subject to change.

Thursday, September 23

6:00 p.m. Keynote address – Timothy Egan
Roosevelt’s Western Matrix

Friday, September 24

8:30 Duane Jundt
“A Fine Posse Indeed”: TR’s Western Friends

10:00 a.m. Jeremy Johnston
TR, Buffalo Bill Cody, and the Newlands Reclamation Act

1:00 p.m. Char Miller
Science and Public Policy: Roosevelt’s Circle of Resource Advisors

2:30 p.m. TRA Board of Trustees meeting

Saturday, September 25

8:30 a.m.

Announcement of the recipients of the 2021 Theodore Roosevelt Association Awards
- Theodore Roosevelt Association Medal of Honor
- USS Theodore Roosevelt (CVN-71) Junior Officer Leadership Award
- Theodore Roosevelt Book Award
- Theodore Roosevelt Children’s Book Prize
Theodore Roosevelt in North Dakota: Coming Attractions
- Theodore Roosevelt Center: The Theodore Roosevelt Center has created an ambitious exhibit entitled The Rough Rider and the Shadow Catcher: Edward S. Curtis and Theodore Roosevelt which will premiere in September 2022. TR scholar Clay Jenkinson will discuss the relationship between TR and Curtis and how it will be represented in the exhibit.
- Theodore Roosevelt Medora Foundation: The Theodore Roosevelt Medora Foundation is a 501c3 nonprofit whose mission is to preserve, present, and serve the history of Theodore Roosevelt and the Badlands to the surrounding public. It is through entertainment opportunities such as the Medora Musical, Bully Pulpit Golf Course, and more that TRMF, alongside partners at the Theodore Roosevelt National Park and Chateau de Mores, works to make Medora North Dakota’s #1 tourist destination. Kaelee Knoell, Marketing Manager of the Theodore Roosevelt Medora Foundation, will present the current and future projects on which TRMF is working.
- Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library: The Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library Foundation is proud to partner with North Dakota and the region’s esteemed local organizations to build a presidential library that will honor the life and legacy of the 26th President of the United States. The TRPL will not just be an ordinary presidential library; this institution is being constructed with the surrounding landscape and spirit of the Medora Badlands in mind. Ed O’Keefe, CEO of the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library Foundation, will report on the project’s progress, key partnerships, and upcoming timelines and goals.

12:30 p.m. Virtual Tour

Because this year’s symposium will be virtual rather than (as we hoped) in person on the edge of TR’s beloved badlands, we are offering a glimpse of TR sites further afield in North Dakota – some of our favorites, which we could not ordinarily visit during the symposium: Chase Lake National Wildlife Refuge, White Horse Hill National Game Preserve (which was Sullys Hill National Park in TR’s time), the North Unit of Theodore Roosevelt National Park, and the Lower Yellowstone Irrigation Project, one of 24 designated during TR’s term under the auspices of the Newlands Reclamation Act of 1902. Sharon Kilzer, Clay Jenkinson, DSU President Stephen Easton, and others will introduce the segments live from the heart of TR’s badlands.

Speakers

Roosevelt’s Western Matrix — Timothy Egan

Timothy Egan has written several books which touch on the adventures and conservation achievement of Theodore Roosevelt. He will lay the groundwork of our three-day exploration of Roosevelt’s associations in the trans-Mississippi West. Roosevelt’s network was very large, and he made friends instantly throughout his travels. Egan will provide a conceptual map of the way that these Western friendships shaped Roosevelt’s outlook and his work as the 26th President.

Timothy Egan is a prolific author and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist. His books include The Big Burn: Teddy Roosevelt and the Fire that Saved America, Short Nights of the Shadow Catcher: The Epic Life and Immortal Photographs of Edward Curtis, and his most recent release, A Pilgrimage to Eternity: From Canterbury to Rome in Search of a Faith. His account of the Dust Bowl, The Worst Hard Time, won the 2006 National Book Award, one of the nation’s highest literary honors, and he was featured prominently in the 2012 Ken Burns film on the Dust Bowl. Now an opinion columnist for the New York Times, Egan was a writer there for 18 years, first as the Pacific Northwest correspondent, then as a national enterprise reporter.

TR, Buffalo Bill Cody, and the Newlands Reclamation Act — Jeremy Johnston

Jeremy M. Johnston of the Buffalo Bill Center of the West will examine the relationship between Roosevelt and William F. Cody. Buffalo Bill’s Wild West began in North Platte, Nebraska, in 1883, the same year TR first came to the Dakota badlands. Both men played a significant role in promulgating the American West as one of our most enduring national myths. After Cody created a Wyoming town named after himself, he attempted to “make the desert bloom” by expanding his irrigation empire watered by the Shoshone River. This attempt led him to seek the Roosevelt administration’s assistance through the Reclamation Service established by the Newlands Reclamation Act. This action greatly strained the professional relationship between Roosevelt and Buffalo Bill.

Jeremy M. Johnston is the Historian of the Buffalo Bill Center of the West, the Hal and Naoma Tate Endowed Chair of Western History, and the Managing Editor of The Papers of William F. Cody. Johnston’s doctoral research examined the personal and professional relationship between Theodore Roosevelt and William F. “Buffalo Bill” Cody, soon to be published by University of Oklahoma Press. In collaboration with Dr. Charles Preston of the Center’s Draper Natural History Museum, Johnston published an annotated version of Ernest Thompson-Seton’s Wahb: The Biography of a Grizzly. The foreword written by Johnston in this book closely examines Seton and Roosevelt’s role in the Nature Faker Controversy and its impact on the story of the fictional grizzly bear Wahb. Johnston has also published numerous articles in Annals of Wyoming, Colorado Heritage, Points West, Readings of Wyoming History, and Yellowstone Science.

“A Fine Posse Indeed”: TR’s Western Friends — Duane Jundt

Roosevelt’s circle of eastern friends and advisors is well known: John Burroughs, Henry Cabot Lodge, and Gifford Pinchot, among many others. But TR also cultivated the friendship of many denizens of the American West, including South Dakota’s Seth Bullock and William Allen White of Kansas. From these individuals and others, whose ranks included a former sheriff, a journalist, a novelist, and a doctor, Roosevelt sought out western tales (both true and tall), hunting and riding companions, and astute political advice. His friends and allies, in turn, enjoyed access to the President and the chance to advance their own fortunes. In the West, TR found places and friendships worth preserving.

A native of North Dakota, Duane Jundt attended Minnesota State University Moorhead and the University of Notre Dame where he served as Managing Editor of the Journal of Policy History. He taught American and European history at Notre Dame and Northwestern College in Iowa for twenty years. A member of the Advisory Board of the Theodore Roosevelt Association, he is a frequent contributor to the TRA Journal. His review essays and articles on Roosevelt have appeared in journals including Orion, Middle West Review, and the Journal of the Wild West History Association. He is one of the authors of Theodore Roosevelt, Naturalist in the Arena.

Science and Public Policy: Roosevelt’s Circle of Resource Advisors — Char Miller

Roosevelt’s great achievement as President was made possible by the dedicated work of many others, including George Bird Grinnell, John Lacey, Gifford Pinchot, and countless local advocates for specific sites and features of the landscape. Char Miller will re-assess the influence of the circle of scientists who advised America’s greatest conservation president.

Char Miller is the W. M. Keck Professor of Environmental Analysis at Pomona College in Claremont, California, and serves as a Senior Fellow of the Pinchot Institute for Conservation and a Fellow of The Forest History Society. An award-winning teacher and scholar, Miller’s books include Hetch Hetchy: A History in Documents, Theodore Roosevelt: Naturalist in the Arena, America’s Great National Forests, Wildernesses, and Grasslands, and Seeking the Greatest Good: The Conservation Legacy of Gifford Pinchot. He frequently contributes essays, commentary, and reviews to newspapers, journals, and online venues.