Roosevelt in the Bad Lands
Theodore Roosevelt spent much of 1883 through 1886 riding the rails between New York and the Dakota Bad Lands. He was trying to become a cattleman and cash in on what was becoming known as the “Beef Bonanza.”
Investors in Europe and the American northeast were sinking big money into cattleman who could deliver beef direct to market in refrigerated cars. Investors were looking for “Ranch to the Table” rather than going through the Chicago Stockyards.
After his wife and mother died TR set off for a change of scenery and a new chapter in his life. He was hell bent on cashing in on the “Beef Bonanza.” He was out to create a career for himself.
It didn’t take long before TR could rope a calf as good as anyone, but while he admired the life of a cowboy he saw himself as a rancher-owner.
In truth he was mostly an “absentee rancher” who probably never stayed out west for more than a month or two at a time and if you added all the months together it probably didn’t amount to more than a year all in all.
He couldn’t stay away from New York. Pullman porters on the Northern Pacific began to know him by name.
TR held a romantic view of the west and spent a fortune to dress the part. His colt had ivory handles engraved with his initials on one side and a buffalo head on the other. His Winchester was engraved with a Buffalo inlay.
He wore buckskin and chaps and carried a Tiffany made Bowie knife. His belt buckle was from Tiffany. He sported alligator boots with his initials engraved on his Tiffany spurs.
He had big thick glasses. They called him “Storm Windows.” He acted and spoke like a tin horn. “Hasten come hither here.”
He invested in two ranchers. The Elkhorn and the Maltese Cross (Chimney Butte). The ranches were 40 miles apart.
To get to either you’d have to follow the Little Missouri nicknamed “Little Misery” fording the river about 20 times each way.
Custer passed through the Medora Bad Lands on his way to the Little Big Horn and called the country “worthless.” Owen Wister wrote It was a land perfect for intrigue and murder with only the cold blue sky as a witness.
Roosevelt continued to write, but as Owen Wister observed his best work was done in New York from Sagamore Hill writing about the spring roundups and the Dakota blizzards.
The same could be said for Owen Wister who wrote The Virginian in Charleston SC or for Frederic Remington who sculpted and painted in his New Rochelle studio. These Ivy Leaguers (Remington from Yale, Wister an TR from Harvard) gave us the American cowboy. Up until that time Cow Boy was two words.
