Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library

#OTD in 1898, the Rough Riders woke to heavy dew and clear skies, sprawled in a hasty camp behind the little Cuban village of Daiquirí, where they had landed the day before. It had been a rough arrival. The dock was a wreck, the surf heaved, and two Buffalo Soldiers of the Tenth Cavalry had drowned coming ashore. Roosevelt's own horse, Rain-in-the-Face, had been killed in the unloading. His other mount, Little Texas, made it safely to the beach. There was no time to settle in. Early in the afternoon, orders came to be ready to move; by about 3:00 p.m., under a scorching sun, the column started up the narrow path toward Siboney, where Spanish rearguard troops were falling back. Soft from two weeks penned on a transport, men staggered and shed gear along the trail — blankets, cans of meat, even coats — keeping only their rifles and cartridges. Ahead lay a ridge called Las Guasimas, and the regiment's first battle the next morning. But June 23 was the day these green volunteers shouldered their packs and walked, on their own two feet, into the war they had crossed an ocean to find. #OTD #OnThisDay #TheodoreRoosevelt #RoughRiders #SpanishAmericanWar #DareGreatly

#OTD in 1898, the Rough Riders waded ashore at a small Cuban beach called Daiquirí. The ramps dropped, the men stepped off into the surf, and the war Theodore Roosevelt had been waiting most of his adult life to fight became a thing happening to actual men. The landing itself was undefended; Spanish forces had withdrawn inland. But the chaos of getting ashore was real. The surf ran high, the dock was a wreck, and horses and mules were simply thrown overboard to swim for the beach. One of Roosevelt's two horses, Rain-in-the-Face, drowned in the surf. His other, Little Texas, made it ashore — and would carry him up Kettle Hill nine days later. While Roosevelt was superintending the landing, a boat of Black infantrymen capsized and two men drowned; Captain Bucky O'Neill plunged in to try to save them, in vain. Within forty-eight hours, the regiment would be moving inland through dense brush toward a place called Las Guasimas, where, on June 24, they would fight their first major engagement and lose Captain Allyn Capron and Sergeant Hamilton Fish. But on this day in 1898, the war was still ahead. The men coming ashore — cowboys, college athletes, miners, lawmen, ranchers from the Dakotas — were the volunteer regiment Roosevelt had built in San Antonio. He believed in them. They believed in him. By July, the country could not stop reading about them. By August, the war would be over. #OTD #OnThisDay #TheodoreRoosevelt #RoughRiders #SpanishAmericanWar #DareGreatly

Standing at the rim of the Grand Canyon in 1903, Theodore Roosevelt gave the country a piece of advice it's still grateful for: "Leave it as it is. You cannot improve on it… Keep it for your children, your children's children, and all who come after you." Soon after, he used his presidential powers to protect it. That instinct — to keep good things for the future — lives in this shirt. The Men's Black Tech Chambray Short-Sleeve Shirt by Orvis is built from an eco-friendly fiber made from recycled plastic bottles and oyster shells reclaimed from the restaurant industry. Wrinkle-resistant, machine washable, sizes S–XXL, and a clean black that goes with everything. Wear the legacy. Support the Library with every purchase. 🔗 shop.trlibrary.com/products/mens-… #TheodoreRoosevelt #TRLibrary #Orvis #Conservation #GrandCanyon

Before the doors open July 4, CBS Sunday Morning came to the Badlands. Correspondent Lee Cowan walked the Library's grass-covered roof, stepped into a recreation of the Elkhorn Ranch cabin, and sat down with an AI archive where Participants can hold a real conversation with T.R. himself. This is the country that healed a grieving young Roosevelt and forged the leader he became — told not under glass, but as a call to adventure. Watch the full segment, then come see it in person. youtube.com/watch?v=qR8xwI… #TR250 #DareGreatly #TheodoreRoosevelt #CBSSundayMorning #NorthDakota #Badlands

In June 1910, after fourteen months away — eleven of them in Africa, the rest on a triumphal European tour — Theodore Roosevelt came home to Sagamore Hill. He had left the United States in March 1909, twenty-six days out of office, bound for an East African safari that would carry him through what is now Kenya, Uganda, and the southern Sudan. He came out of the bush at Khartoum a year later to find that he was, somehow, more famous than when he went in. The European leg became an unofficial victory tour: the Sorbonne speech in Paris on April 23, the Romanes Lecture at Oxford on June 7, the Guildhall address in London at the end of May, dinners with kings, an audience with Pope Pius X. When the "Kaiserin Auguste Victoria" docked in New York on June 18, 1910, a great crowd lined the harbor to welcome him. And then, in the days that followed, he did the thing he had been longing to do: he went home, up the hill above Long Island Sound, to the rambling house he had commissioned in 1884. Sagamore Hill was where he came to rest, to write, and to think. It is where he wrote much of his autobiography, received political delegations, and watched, with growing concern, the country move toward a war his sons would fight in. He came home in June 1910 not knowing that within two years he would be running for president again — and within nine he would be dead. #OTD #OnThisDay #TheodoreRoosevelt #SagamoreHill #DareGreatly

@RobbReport has named the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library to its 2026 Best of the Best in design — recognized in the Museum category, on a list that runs from Roche Bobois to Poliform to Minotti to the glassmakers of Murano. That's humbling company. These are houses that have shaped how the world thinks about craft for generations. That a building rising from a butte in Medora, North Dakota now sits among them is a credit to the architects at Snøhetta — and to a Library designed not to stand apart from the prairie, but to become part of it. A living roof of native grasses. A form that follows the land. Grateful for all who have helped make the dream a reality. ow.ly/fNg250ZeLK2 #DareGreatly #TR250

#OTD in 1898, a former New York City police commissioner who had walked away from a Navy Department desk stood on the deck of a packed steamship and got his first look at the war he had insisted on joining. Lieutenant Colonel Theodore Roosevelt and his Rough Riders had sailed from Tampa on June 14 aboard the "Yucatán", nearly a thousand men jammed into berths meant for a few hundred. Roosevelt compared the lower hold to the "Black Hole of Calcutta." Rations were short, the sea was rough, and seasickness emptied many a stomach. Then, on Monday, June 20, the jagged, barren mountains of Cuba rose off the bow. Colonel Leonard Wood thought they looked like ranges he'd crossed in Arizona; Roosevelt thought they resembled the mountains of Montana. At night the men watched unfamiliar stars wheel overhead and hailed the Southern Cross as it climbed above the horizon. These were cowboys, miners, Ivy Leaguers, and lawmen who had trained barely a month. Within a week, many of their names would be in headlines across the country. For now, they simply leaned on the rail and watched a foreign coast slide closer — a quiet moment before the storm. #OTD #OnThisDay #TheodoreRoosevelt #RoughRiders #SpanishAmericanWar #DareGreatly

One of the works waiting inside the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library when it opens July 4 is an original painting by Bismarck artist Jessica Wachter — and it's being kept under wraps until then. Titled "Out of Darkness Comes Light," the abstract piece measures 10 feet by 9 feet and took more than a year to complete. Wachter, a North Dakota native, is one of a handful of artists whose work will be featured at the Library. Wachter says the painting reflects Roosevelt's life and the North Dakota Badlands — including the loss of his wife and mother on the same day in 1884, and the healing he found in the West. The full reveal comes on opening day. The Library will own the piece and plans to display it for at least its first year. @kfyrtv 's Jody Kerzman has a first look: ow.ly/ZEW050ZeLuu #DareGreatly #TR250

A rainbow arced over the Library last night, right on cue. 15 days until the doors open in Medora — and the world is invited. July 4. The Badlands are waiting. trlibrary.com/tickets 📸 [Director of IT — CJ von Buchwald-Wright. #DareGreatly #TR250

#OTD in 1900, the Republican National Convention gaveled to order in Philadelphia — and set in motion the chain of events that would put Theodore Roosevelt one heartbeat from the presidency. Roosevelt was Governor of New York, a Spanish-American War hero, and a genuine political headache for the party bosses who couldn't control him. New York boss Tom Platt had a clever solution: kick him upstairs. Make him Vice President — a job thought so powerless it would bury his career. Roosevelt was wary of the trap. But the delegates adored him, and the momentum proved unstoppable. Before the convention closed on June 21, he was nominated for Vice President — by a vote of 925 to nothing, his own ballot the only one withheld. Mark Hanna, the Republican kingmaker, is said to have fumed that there would be only "one life between that madman and the presidency." Sixteen months later, an assassin's bullet took William McKinley's life — and the man Hanna feared became the youngest president in American history. #OTD #OnThisDay #TheodoreRoosevelt #ElectionOf1900 #PresidentialHistory #DareGreatly

REGISTER NOW | Join us for two days of inquiry as we explore executive authority through George Washington and Theodore Roosevelt–featuring Jeremi Suri, PhD, American historian and author of 𝘊𝘪𝘷𝘪𝘭 𝘞𝘢𝘳 𝘉𝘺 𝘖𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳 𝘔𝘦𝘢𝘯𝘴: 𝘈𝘮𝘦𝘳𝘪𝘤𝘢’𝘴 𝘓𝘰𝘯𝘨 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘜𝘯𝘧𝘪𝘯𝘪𝘴𝘩𝘦𝘥 𝘍𝘪𝘨𝘩𝘵 𝘧𝘰𝘳 𝘋𝘦𝘮𝘰𝘤𝘳𝘢𝘤𝘺. Participants MUST teach in a formal K-12 classroom or school setting. Register at trlibrary.com/gwti-250. Presented in partnership with @MountVernon. #professionaldevelopment #mountvernon #teachers #presidentiallibrary

#OTD in 1910, shortly after seven o'clock in the morning, a great hull emerged from the harbor mist: the liner "Kaiserin Auguste Victoria", carrying home a private citizen the whole country had been waiting for. Theodore Roosevelt had been gone fifteen months — first on a sweeping scientific safari through British East Africa for the Smithsonian, then on a triumphant tour of Europe where kings and crowds treated the former president like visiting royalty. Now he was coming back to an America hungry to see him. New York gave him a homecoming for the ages. A revenue cutter carried his children out to meet the ship. Roosevelt then transferred to a larger cutter and led a water parade of nearly a hundred vessels up the harbor, whistles screaming the whole way. His old Rough Riders rode at the head of the land parade. By some estimates, a million people turned out to welcome him. He had left office promising to stay out of politics. But the cheering crowds told a different story — and within two years he would be back in the arena, splitting his party and running for president once more. #OTD #OnThisDay #TheodoreRoosevelt #NewYork #AfricanExpedition #DareGreatly

Theodore Roosevelt packed light and traveled hard — from the Dakota Badlands to the African veldt to the Amazon. He'd have appreciated a pack that just works. Both the Slate and Olive Special Edition Filson All-Weather Backpacks ($229.99) carry 30 liters in water-resistant recycled polyester, seal up with a roll-top closure, ride on a padded breathable harness, and hide an interior laptop pocket. Slate is the cool, urban gray-blue; olive is the deep, go-anywhere green. The only hard part is choosing — and whichever you pick, every purchase supports the Library. 🔗 Slate → ow.ly/Vcob50Z6vv4 🔗 Olive → ow.ly/R7x450Z6vv8 #TheodoreRoosevelt #TRLibrary #Filson #AllWeather

#OTD in 1902, less than nine months into his presidency, Theodore Roosevelt signed a law that did something American government had never done before: it committed the federal government to financing irrigation, dams, and reservoirs across the arid West. The Newlands Reclamation Act was named for Representative Francis Newlands of Nevada, but Roosevelt's hand was on it from the start. It authorized the Secretary of the Interior to identify irrigation sites in sixteen Western states and territories and to fund their construction from the proceeds of public land sales. It set up what would become the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation — the agency that, over the next century, would build Hoover Dam, Grand Coulee Dam, and the dam-and-canal infrastructure that turned much of the arid West into productive land. When Roosevelt visited Salt Lake City a year later on his Western Tour, he praised Utahns for the irrigation systems they had already built. But the Newlands Act was the federal commitment to do that work at scale, in places that could not have done it alone. Modern critics — including conservation thinkers Roosevelt himself influenced — have raised hard questions about reclamation's environmental costs: the rivers it has stilled, the salmon runs it has ended, the water tables it has drawn down. Those questions are legitimate, and the long-term ledger on dam-building is more complicated than 1902 imagined. But the federal commitment to manage Western water began with this signature. #OTD #OnThisDay #TheodoreRoosevelt #Conservation #ReclamationAct #DareGreatly

#OTD in 1908, the Republican National Convention opened inside Chicago's hangar-like Coliseum — and everyone in the hall knew whose shadow filled it. Theodore Roosevelt was wildly popular and could almost certainly have had a third nomination for the asking. Instead, he had pledged not to run again and thrown his weight behind his friend and Secretary of War, William Howard Taft. His job now was to make sure the convention took the man he'd chosen — and didn't try to stampede back to him. It nearly did. When the chairman called Roosevelt "the best-abused and most popular man in the United States," the hall erupted; a chant rolled down from the galleries — "four, four, four years more!" — and a roaring demonstration for the President ran on for forty-nine astonishing minutes. Back in Washington, Roosevelt listened in over a wire patched into a White House telephone, emerging afterward, an aide noted, "in as gay a humor as I have ever seen him." But Roosevelt held firm. Days later the delegates nominated Taft on the first ballot. He had handed off the presidency he loved — a decision he would spend the next four years coming to regret. #OTD #OnThisDay #TheodoreRoosevelt #WilliamHowardTaft #PresidentialHistory #DareGreatly

#OTD in 1912, Theodore Roosevelt did something no major-party contender had done before: he went to the convention himself. By tradition, presidential candidates stayed home and let the convention come to them. Roosevelt — convinced the Republican machine was stealing the nomination from him delegate by delegate, against the will of voters who had backed him in the new primaries — decided tradition could be damned. He announced at breakfast that the family was bound for Chicago. He would go into the hall and lead his men. Grabbing books by Herodotus and Ferrero "to amuse myself … and get my mind off the business in Chicago," he and his entourage boarded a westbound train. On this day in 1912, a Saturday, that train pulled into Chicago and Roosevelt was mobbed by cheering crowds. The convention's committee had already handed nearly all the disputed delegates to President Taft — in some respects, he had arrived too late. But he was, as a young cousin wrote in his diary, "bubbling over with cheerfulness." Within weeks, the split would give birth to the Progressive "Bull Moose" Party and one of the most dramatic three-way elections in American history. #OTD #OnThisDay #TheodoreRoosevelt #BullMoose #ElectionOf1912 #DareGreatly

#OTD in 1898, after six maddening days at anchor, the largest invasion force the United States had ever assembled was finally turned loose. Theodore Roosevelt and the Rough Riders had scrambled aboard the transport "Yucatán" at Port Tampa nearly a week earlier — and then nothing. Word had come that unidentified ships were lurking in the channel between Florida and Cuba, and the whole expedition was ordered to wait until the coast was, literally, clear. So they sat: thousands of men packed into ships in a hot, crowded bay, choking down stringy "canned fresh beef" most of them refused to eat. One Rough Rider, a former Wall Street trader, simply swam a half-mile to shore for a decent meal and swam back. Then, on this day in 1898, the welcome news arrived: the mysterious "enemy" vessels were a pair of civilian ships. The fleet was free to go. That day thirty-one transports carrying nearly 17,000 men, more than 2,000 horses and mules, and ten million pounds of rations began moving out of Hillsborough Bay toward the Gulf. On the quay stood three women and a group of sweaty stevedores — the only goodbye party for an army on its way to war. #OTD #OnThisDay #TheodoreRoosevelt #RoughRiders #SpanishAmericanWar #DareGreatly

Theodore Roosevelt was never happier than when he was outside and busy — fishing, hunting, riding, rambling. He believed the outdoors wasn't a luxury but a birthright, something worth protecting for everyone who came after. Over his presidency he safeguarded roughly 230 million acres so they'd still be there for us. This is a do-everything shirt in that same outdoor spirit. The Women's Blue Chambray Tech Short-Sleeve Shirt by Orvis is made from an eco-friendly performance fiber spun from recycled plastic and oyster shells reclaimed from the restaurant industry — soft, machine washable, sizes S–XL, in a versatile blue that's at home on the water or in town. Get outside in it. And every purchase supports the Library. 🔗 shop.trlibrary.com/products/women… #TheodoreRoosevelt #TRLibrary #Orvis #Conservation #SustainableStyle

On this day in 1884, a young New Yorker stood in the Dakota Badlands and got measured for a suit. Not a city suit. Buckskin. Theodore Roosevelt was 25, and he'd come west carrying more grief than most people see in a lifetime. Four months earlier, on February 14, his wife and his mother had died on the same day, in the same house. He marked his diary with a heavy black X and the words, "The light has gone out of my life." So he did what he always did when the ground gave way — he went to work, outdoors, hard. He threw himself into ranching along the Little Missouri River: riding, hunting, learning the country. On June 13, near Gregor Lang's cabin, he spent the day hunting — a jackrabbit and a curlew, both dropped with his heavy express rifle. And a local woman, Mrs. Maddox, sized him up for a fringed buckskin suit. That suit became one of the most famous outfits in American history — the one TR wears in the studio portrait where he looks every inch the frontiersman: rifle in hand, knife on his belt, jaw set. The dude from Manhattan was becoming something else out here. He always credited this country with shaping the man he became. The leader who would help create the U.S. Forest Service and protect roughly 230 million acres of public land was, in June 1884, just a grieving young rancher being fitted for buckskin on the Dakota frontier. That transformation is the story we tell. It happened here. #OnThisDay #TheodoreRoosevelt #TeddyRoosevelt #Badlands #Medora #NorthDakota #Conservation #AmericanHistory

Theodore Roosevelt spent much of his life out under open sky — in the Maine woods as a sickly boy learning to push his body, in the North Dakota Badlands mending a broken heart on horseback, and later on the rims of canyons and the floors of forests he would fight to protect for the rest of us. What he learned in those wild places he carried into the presidency. He believed the land was not ours to use up. It was held in trust — borrowed from the people not yet born. Standing before the Grand Canyon, he put it plainly: "Leave it as it is. You can not improve on it. The ages have been at work on it, and man can only mar it. What you can do is to keep it for your children, your children's children, and for all who come after you, as one of the great sights which every American if he can travel at all should see." That idea — that we are caretakers, not owners — is the heart of his conservation legacy: roughly 230 million acres set aside during his presidency, a gift still unfolding more than a century later. Take a walk somewhere green this week. He would have told you it was the most American thing you could do. #OTD #OnThisDay #TheodoreRoosevelt #Conservation #PublicLands #GrandCanyon #DareGreatly