Roosevelt the Cowboy
In 1880 TR hires Joe Ferris as a guide and stays at Gregor Lang's ranch. After dinner the two would talk for hours about ranching, hunting, conservation and politics. It takes TR 8 days with Ferris to hunt down one of the last Buffalo in North Dakota.
Roosevelt calls every meal a banquet and sleeps on the dirt floor. He tries to live the life of a cowboy. He gets beat up taming Broncos. Breaks a rib and injures his shoulder.
In 1880 the Census Bureau officially closed the frontier. The government claimed it no longer existed. TR wanted to see what he pictured the original wild west before it disappeared forever.
After losing his wife and mother on the same day he finishes his term in office and goes to his first Republican Convention. Instead of returning home he takes the Northern Pacific west to the little Missouri trying his hand at cattle ranching in the town of Medora. To get started he buys 450 head of cattle.
He was a NY city snob wearing silver spurs, a silver belt buckle and an engraved silver knife all from Tiffany. He had a Winchester with a Buffalo inlay. He wore glasses. They called him four eyes and storm windows.
Above all Roosevelt was the boss. He owned the cattle. They were working for him and he proved himself doing everything they did.
TR was into photography. He broght his camera and sent pictures to his friend Frederick Remington to use as models. Years later speaking in Fargo, N.D he told the audience he’d never have become president if it wasn’t for his time out west.
The Pyramid Park Hotel was the only public sleeping quarters in town. Roosevelt would stay there in September 1880.
The only bar was “Big Mouth Bob’s Bug Juice Dispensary.” The special was 40 Mile Red Eye that was said “got the job done.” The XXX on a jug of moonshine meant it went through the still three times and should be pure enough not to kill you. Roosevelt was a Sarsaparilla man.
French Nobleman the Marquis de More names Medora for his wife. He has the idea to use his own local packing house and ship cattle east in new refrigerated rail cars rather than go to the slaughterhouses in Chicago. If he could do that, he’d cut out the middleman.
The Marquis de More builds the town, hires 100 workers for his packing plant, a hotel, stores, a stagecoach line and a newspaper “The Bad Lands Cow Boy.”