New York State Assemblyman Theodore Roosevelt was a busy man in the summer of 1883. He and his wife, Alice, had bought a brownstone the autumn before. Construction was underway of their country house on Long Island. His account of the naval battles of the War of 1812 had just been released after three years work and would become a bestseller. There were his legislative duties, which caused Roosevelt quite a bit of stress. And there was also the lure of big game.
Roosevelt’s brother and a cousin had told him tales of bison hunts in Texas, but it was Henry Gorringe, who Roosevelt met at a dinner in May of 1883, who set his wheels turning. Gorringe was a former Navy officer who had acquired the rights to convert a former military establishment into a hunting lodge and hotel. Where? The Little Missouri Badlands of Dakota Territory. Roosevelt was hooked. He told Gorringe he wanted to shoot a bison “while there were still buffalo to shoot.”
At Gorringe’s invitation, the hunt was set. On this date in 1883, Roosevelt left New York City alone by train for “Pyramid Park,” across the Little Missouri River from the new town of Medora. It was a five-day trip, involving changing trains and long layovers. On the second day, Roosevelt wrote to his mother: “Slept well last night, ate well today and am feeling like a fighting cock.” Eventually he boarded an evening train from Bismarck and set off across the “Slope Country” frontier. Just a few hours earlier, former President Grant had passed through en route to Montana Territory to celebrate the Northern Pacific Railway’s last stake.
Roosevelt reached the Little Missouri station at two o’clock in the morning. He headed for the two-story Pyramid Park Hotel with two big game rifles and a letter of introduction from Gorringe. Theodore Roosevelt had arrived for his bison hunt and the beginning of his long association with the Badlands of Dakota.
Dakota Datebook by Jack Dura
Sources:
Di Silvestro, R.L. (2011). Theodore Roosevelt in the badlands: A young politician’s quest for recovery in the American west. Bloomsbury USA: New York, NY
https://bismarcktribune.com/news/columnists/curt-eriksmoen/tr-had-three-good-friends-in-dakota-territory/article_d42c9522-bc28-11e3-ac2a-0019bb2963f4.html
https://www.nps.gov/thro/learn/historyculture/theodore-roosevelt-timeline.htm
