Theodore Roosevelt arrives at the tiny village
of Little Missouri on the western edge of Dakota
Territory around 3 a.m. on the night of
September 7-8, 1883. According to his own
account, he is the only passenger to disembark
at Little Missouri that night. The depot, such as
it is, offers no amenities and no waiting platform.
Roosevelt had arrived in the Dakota badlands
in the dark. This was his first visit to the true
West. Though he may have experienced the
brokenness of the countryside in silhouette, as
the Northern Pacific steam train chugged from
Belfield down into the badlands, it would not be
until after dawn on September 8 that he will
gaze on the weirdness of the Little Missouri
River Valley for the first time.
Roosevelt carries his duffle bag and guns to
a ramshackle hotel north of the tracks.
He knocks on the door of the Pyramid Park
Hotel, operated by a man named “Captain”
Frank Moore, partly owned by Roosevelt’s New
York friend Henry Gorringe.
Moore leads Roosevelt upstairs to the “bullpen,”
an un-partitioned loft over which fourteen
cots are scattered. Thirteen of them are occupied—
by the kind of men who drifted around the
cattle and railroad frontier in the 1880s. Some of
them, surely, are snoring. One cot is empty. Its
linens are doubtful. Roosevelt takes it. It is
Hobson’s choice.
In the morning, when breakfast is announced,
the inhabitants of the bull-pen unceremoniously
stampede down the stairs of the Pyramid Park
in pursuit of grub. When Roosevelt at last reaches
the wash basin, its waters are foul and the
seamless sack towel is sodden and filthy.
Thus the New York dude, the Harvard-educated
aristocrat who is accustomed to using the
finest soaps and being shaved by a professional
barber, gets his first taste of the democracy
of the frontier.
There is no evidence that Roosevelt found
these experiences anything but “deelightful.”
He had come west to immerse himself in some
authentic frontier experiences before the march
of civilization swallowed up the last of America’s
untamed country. He had not come west to
remake the wild country, but to soak it up and
take it as it actually was.
He strolls six or seven miles that morning, to
get some exercise after five days aboard the
train from New York, and then begins his search
for a local hunting guide.
The romance of Roosevelt’s life has begun. |
