Theodore Roosevelt National Park, North Dakota Historic Resource Study Foundation of Roosevelt’s Elkhorn Ranch. 2013. Photo by Jared Orsi Public Lands History Center Colorado State University Fort Collins, Colorado http://publiclands.colostate.edu/ Abstract Located on 70,446 acres of Badlands territory in western North Dakota, Theodore Roosevelt National Park is divided into three geographically separate areas known as the South Unit, the Elkhorn Ranch Unit, and the North Unit. Founded to honor the president who spent time there in the 1880s and carried the experience forward through the rest of his remarkable career, the park in many ways also records the heritage of the entire North American continent. Among the stories that echo off its eroded cliffs are the first peopling of the continent; the dynamic American Indian cultures that evolved amid formidable environmental challenges; the prolonged period of contact between indigenous and Euro-American peoples and the consequent reshaping of both; the integration of even the remotest places into an international capitalist economy; the transformative energies that industrial development released along with its devastating human and environmental costs; the agrarian dreams that immigrants and other settlers chased across the Plains; and finally the twentieth-century rise of both conservation and consumerism as ways of valuing places and defining identities. This historic resource study provides baseline documentation for this deep history. Human beings have used these lands for sustenance, trade, recreation, and spiritual regeneration for more than ten thousand years. Over that span, the many and varied peoples who have come to the area found creative ways to get by, and even live well, despite the difficult environment. They have used its many resources ingeniously, moved from place to place to maximize access to what they valued, bartered their excess for goods they could not find or make themselves, and preserved rich cultural traditions rooting their identities in the place. This study tells their stories, from the earliest hunter-gatherers to modern RVers and wilderness enthusiasts, emphasizing each people’s relationship with the land and their visions for what their worlds might be. Never, however, did these stories unfold in isolation. Trade networks linked western North Dakota to the rest of the continent from the very beginning, and ever since then, migration, disease, markets, railroads, highways, and the free-flow of ideas have brought constant changes to the region, its people, and their aspirations. Thus, a second goal of this historic resource study is to place western North Dakota’s stories in a rich context of other places, near and far, to which human activity has connected the Badlands. The report demonstrates the many ways in which the lands that became Theodore Roosevelt National Park are unique and must be preserved in their own right as well as the ways that they help illustrate much larger themes that have shaped North American history. In telling the stories of the place and linking them to broader contexts, this historic resource study aims to enrich park personnel’s understanding of the historical significance of the resources they manage, preserve, and interpret for the public. ii Theodore Roosevelt National Park, North Dakota Historic Resource Study Public Lands History Center Colorado State University Fort Collins, Colorado http://publiclands.colostate.edu/ Principal Investigators: Mark Fiege, Ph.D. Janet Ore, Ph.D. Jared Orsi, Ph.D. Program Manager: Maren Bzdek, M.A. Research Associate: Hannah Braun, M.A. Research Assistants: Mark Boxell, M.A. Andrew Cabrall, M.A. Nicholas Gunvaldson, M.A. Clara Keyt, Ph.D. John Kochanczyk, M.A. Jackie Stiverson, M.A. Kailee Swolley, M.A. Prepared under Colorado Plateau Cooperative Ecosystem Studies Unit Cooperative Agreement #H1200-09-0005, PR #20026286 Theodore Roosevelt National Park Midwest Region, National Park Service U.S. Department of the Interior January 10, 2017 Recommended: Associate Regional Director of Cultural Resources, Midwest Region Date Concurred: Superintendent, Theodore Roosevelt National Park Date Approved: Regional Director, Midwest Region Date iii Acknowledgements The principal investigators and researchers would like to acknowledge the tremendous support they have received from National Park Service personnel, who have made research materials available to us, guided us through the park, reviewed drafts, and hosted our public presentation in Medora. These include: Amy McCann, Valerie Naylor, Wendy Ross, Chad Sexton, Don Stevens, and Bill Whitworth. At Colorado State University, we appreciate the invaluable support from the History Department, College of Liberal Arts, and Office of Sponsored Programs, especially Lisa Anaya Esquibel, Michael Carolan, Ann Gill, Sara Payne, Nancy Rehe, Charlene Spencer, Stephan Weiler, Ben Withers, and Doug Yarrington. For guidance through archival materials, we thank Pamela Pierce at Dickinson State University and Susan Quinnell at the North Dakota State Historic Preservation Office. We also appreciate the many hours of professional editing by Richard Orsi. We offer a big thank-you to all of these generous colleagues. iv Table of Contents Introduction Nicholas Gunvaldson 7 1. “A Trade as Lucrative as It Is Extensive”: Indigenous Visions for the Big World of the Upper Missouri River, 13,000 B.C.-1803 Jared Orsi 14 2. One Land, Two Visions: Declining American Indian Independence, 1780s-1890s Jared Orsi 35 3. “Pioneers of Civilization”: Theodore Roosevelt in the Badlands Mark Boxell 54 4. Theodore Roosevelt, the Global West, and the Conservation Movement, 1887-1919 Nicholas Gunvaldson 75 5. The Homesteading Era: An Agrarian Society in the Badlands, 1898-1937 Clara Keyt 93 6. The New Deal and Park Beginnings Clara Keyt with Kailee Swolley 116 7. Mission 66 and the Modernization of Theodore Roosevelt National Memorial Park, 1947-1972 Janet Ore 135 8. Theodore Roosevelt National Park in the Environmental Age: Resources under Threat, 1973-2014 Janet Ore 153 Conclusion Hannah Braun 180 Appendix A: Resources Master List Maren Bzdek 184 Appendix B: Maps of Theodore Roosevelt National Park and Vicinity 216 Bibliography 218 v [This page intentionally left blank] vi Introduction Nicholas R. Gunvaldson For centuries, humans have projected cultural meanings onto the area that today comprises Theodore Roosevelt National Park. Remote, unstable, inaccessible, and often dangerous, the region has continued to fascinate and challenge people since American Indians first called it home. As different groups have sojourned there, the landscape has changed dramatically, often as a direct result of human modification. Long before Theodore Roosevelt came to hunt bison and bighorn sheep, American Indians used the area as a grand corridor connecting the Badlands to a much larger world. In this sense, the history of Theodore Roosevelt National Park and its surroundings can be told by examining a series of visions that people have projected and then enacted upon the land. By “visions,” we mean the human ability to imagine alternatives to the way things are. A thousand years ago, Plains peoples looked at bison herds and saw the possibility of killing more than they needed to eat and trading the excess for items they could not otherwise access. Late nineteenth-century homesteaders saw a sea of grass and imagined plowed soil and fertile farms. Postwar conservationists saw eroded gullies, depleted wildlife, and dilapidated buildings and fences and imagined restoring a functioning ecosystem. For millennia, these and many other visions have inspired people to act out their imaginations, changing both themselves and their landscape in the process. This Historic Resource Study tells that story at Theodore Roosevelt National Park. Description of Theodore Roosevelt National Park Located on 70,446 acres of Badlands territory in western North Dakota, Theodore Roosevelt National Park is divided into three geographically separate areas known as the South Unit, the Elkhorn Ranch Unit, and the North Unit. Visitors to the park encounter a diverse landscape that changes from season to season. In summer and fall, brown and spindly grasses dominate the river valleys and hillsides until the spring, when they briefly emerge bright green, accented by countless wild flowers. Winter is harsh and unforgiving, cloaking the ragged Badlands terrain in a deep blanket of snow. In Theodore Roosevelt’s words, the winter “turns the green, grassy prairies of midsummer into iron-bound wastes.”1 Despite climatic hardship, humans have lived in the Little Missouri Badlands for more than ten thousand years, although permanent habitations did not appear until late in the nineteenth century. The park’s jagged buttes, grand plateaus, sprawling river valleys, and shimmering mixed-grass prairies maintain a high degree of resource integrity enabling visitors to imagine a relatively unspoiled Little Missouri Badlands environment. 1 Theodore Roosevelt, The Wilderness Hunter (New York City: G.P. Putnam & Sons, 1893), 93. 7 Little Missouri Badlands, River Bend Overlook, North Unit. 2013. Photo by Jared Orsi. Two features connect the three units of Theodore Roosevelt National Park. The first feature is natural—the cottonwood-lined Little Missouri River—which carries sediments north from Wyoming through the South Unit and Roosevelt’s Elkhorn Ranch site, then turns east and runs through the North Unit before joining the Missouri River.