Years In The Bad Lands
Roosevelt’s Bad Land years were from 1883 to 1886. He was trying to cash in on the “Beef Bonanza.” Using refrigerated railroad cars ranchers could slaughter their herd and send them east by rail eliminating the middlemen in the Chicago Stockyards.
The problem facing TR was the Bad Lands were no country for cattle. Custer passed through on his way to the Little Big Horn and called the country “worthless.” Wister said it was a land perfect for intrigue and murder with only the cold blue sky as a witness.
During those years he wasn’t away from New York for more than a couple of months at a time. Pullman porters on the Northern Pacific began to know him by his name.
All and all TR’s real time out west didn’t amount to more than about 12 months and according to Wister while there his literary accomplishments didn’t amount to a hill of beans. He did finish his book on Benton but as Owen Wister observed his greatest work was done while he was in New York. His accounts of the Dakota blizzards and the spring round ups were best done in Oyster Bay at Sagamore Hill.
It could be said it was the same for Wister and Remington. Wister wrote The Virginian in Charleston, South Carolina and Remington did his best work in the suburbs of New Rochelle. It was Roosevelt, Wister and Remington who gave the country the heroic cowboy. Three Ivy Leaguers; one from Yale and two from Harvard. Before those three cowboy was spelled with two words.
Although TR learned to rope a steer with the best of them, he never saw himself as a cowboy, he always identified with being a ranchman and not a cowboy making sure to separate himself as an owner instead of a cowhand. In truth he was mostly an “absentee ranchman.”
On cattle drives he’d stand night duty. There was nothing more dangerous or deadly than a night stampede.
It was about 40 miles between the Elkhorn and the Maltese Cross (Chimney Butte) ranches. Following the river you’d have to cross back and forth about 20 times.
TR held a romantic view of the west and spent a fortune to dress the part. He wore buckskin and chaps with a Tiffany Bowie knife and a Tiffany bear headed belt buckle. Alligator boots with Tiffany spurs engraved with his initials.
His colt had engraved ivory handles with his initials on one side and the head of a buffalo on the other. His Winchester was engraved with a Buffalo inlay.
When TR was in the Bad Lands it was during the final days of the Wild West that was about to vanish forever.
Eastern and European money was investing in the cattle business.
