A National Park for the Father of Parks

01The U.S.

02National Park Service has been celebrating its 100th anniversary in 2016.

03Woodrow Wilson, America's 28th president, established the National Park Service in 1916 to protect the wild and wonderful landscapes in the United States.

04But it is an earlier leader who is considered the father of America's national parks.

05In 1906, Theodore Roosevelt, America's 26th president, signed the American Antiquities Act.

06The law permitted him and future presidents to take immediate action to protect important cultural or natural resources.

07The Antiquities Act led to the creation of many of the 413 sites within the National Park Service today.

08No president has played a bigger role in protecting the country's natural and cultural resources than Theodore Roosevelt.

09During his time in office, he established five new national parks and 18 national monuments.

10In all, he protected over 93 million hectares of public land.

11Roosevelt's concern for the land and environment came from the time he spent in the Dakota Territory, beginning in the 1880s.

12The area where he traveled is now the state of North Dakota.

13Today, you will find a national park there named in his honor.

14The park protects badlands, wildlife, scenic views, as well as two ranches where Roosevelt himself once lived.

15Welcome to Theodore Roosevelt National Park.

16Theodore Roosevelt came to Dakota Territory in September 1883.

17He was a young, married man from New York, where his political career was just beginning.

18He came to Dakota in hopes of hunting huge animals called bison.

19He also had a great interest in the Western frontier lifestyle.

20Roosevelt soon developed an interest in raising cattle.

21Cattle ranching in Dakota was a big business in the 1880s.

22Cattle fed on the land's healthful grasses.

23He and a partner entered the business.

24Roosevelt invested $14,000 to build the Maltese Cross Ranch.

25Roosevelt returned to New York while workers constructed the ranch.

26He resumed his political duties in Albany, the state capital.

27But in early 1884, he experienced two great personal losses.

28His mother and wife died of illnesses on the same day, February 14.

29Roosevelt described the pain and loss in his diary with only one sentence.

30The light has gone out of my life.

31Roosevelt again headed west in the summer of 1884.

32He sought to escape the reminders of his recent losses.

33He arrived at his newly built Maltese Cross Ranch.

34He also decided to build a second ranch in a quieter, more remote area.

35He called that ranch Elkhorn.

36Roosevelt traveled between New York and Dakota, working both as a state lawmaker and a cattle rancher.

37In late 1884, he helped form an organization in Dakota to help protect ranchers' rights.

38In 1885, Roosevelt published his first book about his experiences as a rancher and hunter.

39In it, he predicted that the cattle industry of the Dakota Badlands was not sustainable.

40In other words, it would not last.

41Roosevelt was right.

42Severe weather struck the area in 1886 and 1887.

43In the winter, a terrible freeze killed many cattle.

44The animals that survived the cold soon starved.

45Roosevelt himself lost over half of his cattle.

46He decided to get out of the business.

47Visitors to Theodore Roosevelt National Park can experience the Badlands just as Roosevelt did hundreds of years ago.

48They can also visit the Maltese Cross Cabin, as well as the Elkhorn Ranch area.

49The park has three main areas.

50The South Unit, the North Unit, and the Elkhorn Ranch Unit.

51In the South Unit, visitors can drive along the Scenic Loop Road.

52It offers many places to see wildlife and the surrounding Badlands.

53Badlands are very dry places with little vegetation.

54Wind and water shape Badlands mainly through erosion.

55The process leaves behind high, flat-topped hills of clay and other soft rock.

56Many visitors stop to look at Painted Canyon.

57It gets its name from the colorful exposed rocks there.

58Trails near the canyon offer visitors a chance to see animals, from the huge American bison to small black-tailed prairie dogs.

59These animals are not really dogs.

60They are rodents.

61Roosevelt described prairie dogs as The North Unit also offers several hiking trails.

62Some paths are short and easy.

63Others may take two days to complete.

64The Aachenbach Trail is a 28-kilometer-long path.

65It crosses the Little Missouri River and takes visitors into the heart of the Theodore Roosevelt Wilderness.

66The third area of the park is the Elkhorn Ranch Unit.

67This is what Roosevelt described as his home ranch.

68He wrote of the ranch in this way.

69My home ranch house stands on the river brink, From the low, long veranda shaded by leafy cottonwoods.

70One looks across sandbars and shallows to a strip of meadowland, Behind which rises a line of sheer cliffs and grassy plateaus.

71Today, the Elkhorn cabin itself no longer stands.

72Visitors will find only stone rocks where the cabin once was.

73The area that surrounds Elkhorn, however, is among the most beautiful, wild, and quiet places in the Badlands of North Dakota.

74It is this peace and beauty that appealed to Roosevelt after the deaths of his mother and wife.

75But the Dakota Badlands did more than just help Roosevelt overcome his pain.

76They helped shape the kind of president he would later become.

77In the words of Roosevelt himself, I would not have been president had it not been for my experience in North Dakota.

78I'm Ashley Thompson.

79And I'm John Russell.

80I'm John Russell.

81I'm John Russell.

82I'm John Russell.

83I'm John Russell.

84I'm John Russell.

85I'm John Russell.

86I'm John Russell.

87I'm John Russell.

88I'm John Russell.

89I'm John Russell.

90I'm John Russell.