Roosevelt also seemed somewhat estranged from Grinnell because of the flap between them over the article in Forest and Stream that had attacked John Burroughs. By April 1904 Grinnell had finished editing the Boone and Crockett Club’s fourth volume, American Big Game in Its Haunts—for the first time without Theodore Roosevelt as coeditor. Yet the lead article, “Wilderness Reserves”—later collected in Outdoor Pastimes—had been written by Roosevelt; it also appeared in Forest and Stream. “Mr. Roosevelt’s account of what may be seen [in Yellowstone],” Grinnell wrote, “is so convincing that all who read it and appreciate the importance of preserving our large mammals, must become advocates of the forest reserve game refuge system.” As if trying to bridge the gap between Roosevelt and himself, Grinnell went on for several pages about what a “great thing” Roosevelt’s “accession to the Presidential chair” had been for forest reserves, national parks, big game, and birds in general.4 “Aside from his love for nature, and his wish to have certain limited areas remain in their natural condition, absolutely untouched by the ax of the lumberman, and unimproved by the work of the forester,” Grinnell wrote, “is that broader sentiment in behalf of humanity in the United States, which has led him to declare that such refuges should be established for the benefit of the man of moderate means and the poor man, whose opportunities to hunt and to see game are few and far between.”5
Roosevelt’s essay “Wilderness Reserves” began with a photograph of tourists at Yellowstone, all dressed in Sunday clothes, watching black bears eat in an open field, and another of Oom John meditating by a clear stream, with traceried wrinkles around his all-seeing, naturalist’s eyes. Once again railing against “greedy and shortsighted vandalism,” Roosevelt explained why preservation of both forests and wildlife was essential to the long-term health of America:
The wild creatures of the wilderness add to it by their presence a charm which it can acquire in no other way. On every ground it is well for our nation to preserve, not only for the sake of this generation, but above all for the sake of those who come after us, representatives of the stately and beautiful haunters of the wilds which were once found throughout our great forests, over the vast lonely plains, and on the high mountain ranges, but which are now on the point of vanishing save where they are protected in natural breeding grounds and nurseries. The work of preservation must be carried on in such a way as to make it evident that we are working in the interest of the people as a whole, not in the interest of any particular class; and that the people benefited beyond all others are those who dwell nearest to the regions in which the reserves are placed. The movement for the preservation by the nation of sections of the wilderness as national playgrounds is essentially a democratic movement in the interest of all our people.6
“Wilderness Reserves,” in which Roosevelt used his 1903 trip to Yellowstone and Yosemite for color and details, was his greatest call yet for preservation. Because there had been no hunting involved in his “western trek,” Roosevelt was able to focus his writing on seeing such wildlife as golden eagles, magpies, scores of black-tails, and an antelope band numbering about 150. There were many Darwinian food-chain anecdotes, including coyotes feasting on deer carcasses and eagles swooping down for mice. Roosevelt was calling for maintaining the balance of nature without unwarranted human intrusions. But the scenic wonders of the West—the groves of giant sequoias and redwoods, the three Tetons glistening in snow, the gulls circling Three Arch Rocks, the Grand Canyon at dusk, the great Mojave Desert with its lonely barren hills—impelled Roosevelt to declare that they should be “preserved for the people forever, with their majestic beauty all unmarred.”7
Roosevelt was also deeply troubled by the Park Commission’s overreach. He rejected the idea of construction along the National Mall from the U.S. Capitol to the Washington Monument in favor of “greenspace.” In a display of outrage that anticipated a later concept, NIMBY, Roosevelt insisted that the Mall should be used for “monumental purposes” only.8 Too many new buildings, he believed, would ruin the park-like essence of official Washington, turning it into a crass thoroughfare. Critics of Roosevelt’s greenspace accused him of hypocrisy, for building a West Wing on the White House (which he wanted architecturally renovated and enlarged) and also a tennis court. “It is true that I have a tennis court in the White House grounds,” Roosevelt wrote in his own defense. “The cost of it has been trivial—less than 400 dollars. It has been paid for exactly as the adjacent garden, for instance, is paid for. The cost is much less than the cost of the greenhouses under Presidents Grant, Harrison, Cleveland, etc.”9
Because there were eight Roosevelts in the White House—Theodore, Edith, Teddy Jr., Kermit, Alice, Quentin, Ethel, and Archibald—not to mention a flood of guests, expansion and remodeling had begun in 1902. Roosevelt wanted the White House divided into living quarters for the first family (East Wing) and office space for the president (West Wing). The architecture firm of McKim, Mead, and White was brought in to do the job. Overseeing it all was Edith, who was determined to transform the old Executive Mansion into “the recognized leader of Washington official Society,” and to make it a “moral” factor in the “social life of America.” By 1904 Edith had become the most popular first lady since Frances Cleveland. Part of Edith’s appeal was that she good-humoredly allowed the six Roosevelt children to collect animals of all kinds. And, as the historian Lewis L. Gould put it, Edith took tremendous care of the president, “the largest child in Mrs. Roosevelt’s brood.”10
One of Edith’s wildlife management problems at the White House was Josiah the badger, now full-grown. Because the president allowed Josiah to roam freely, it constantly gnawed into any leg within reach of its teeth, occasionally drawing blood. Furthermore, President Roosevelt built a durable house for Josiah so it could dig tunnels in the White House lawn.11 “At present he looks more like a small, flat mattress, with a leg under each corner, than anything else,” the reporter Jacob Riis recalled after an afternoon at Sagamore Hill. “That is the President’s description of him, and it is a very good one. I wish I could have shown you him one morning last summer when, having vainly chased the President and all the children, he laid siege to Archie in his hammock. Archie was barelegged and prudently stayed where he was, but the hammock hung within a few inches of the grass. Josiah promptly made out a strategic advantage there, and went for the lowest point of it with snapping jaws. Archie’s efforts to shift continuously his center of gravity while watching his chance to grab the badger by its defenseless back, was one of the funniest performances I ever saw. Josiah lost in the end.”12
Then there was Jonathan Edwards, an untamable cinnamon bear that had been given to Roosevelt by a group of Republicans from West Virginia and named after the Puritan minister (an ancestor of Edith’s). The bear had what Roosevelt called “a temper in which gloom and strength were combined in what the children regarded as Calvinistic proportions.”13 Roosevelt enjoyed taking Jonathan Edwards for walks, feeding it honey and nuts, and playing hard with it, as with an oversize dog. Eventually, when it got too big, the president had to donate it to a zoo.14 As Riis noted in his Theodore Roosevelt: The Citizen (a well-written campaign biography of 1904), the family had so many pets they were hard to count. White rats, opossums, and raccoons were at one time or another White House residents.15 Peter the rabbit hopped about, sometimes sleeping under sofas or inside closets. In between important meetings, Roosevelt would feed mice to his barn owl, a reddish-chested female. Aquariums were full of horned toads, painted turtles, and salamanders. A medium-size iguana used to wander about the White House corridors as freely as did Maude the pig. Roosevelt’s son Theodore Jr. raised a pet lamb named “Teddy” as if it were a family dog. All that was missing was a pushmipullyu, or the White House could have been renamed Puddleby-on-the-Marsh.16
When President Roosevelt was awake late, he sometimes recorded habits of his domestic cats, usually for his children to enjoy. “Tom Quartz is certainly the cunningest kitten I have ever
seen,” he wrote to Kermit from the White House. “He is always playing pranks on Jack and I get very nervous lest Jack should grow too irritated. The other evening they were both in the library—Jack sleeping before the fire—Tom Quartz scampering about, an exceedingly playful wild creature—which is about what he is. He would race across the floor and then jump upon the curtains or play with the tassels. Suddenly he spied Jack and galloped up to him. Jack, looking exceedingly sullen and shamefaced, jumped out of the way and got upon the sofa, where Tom Quartz instantly jumped upon him again. Jack suddenly shifted to the other sofa where Tom Quartz again went after him. Then Jack started for the door, while Tom made a rapid turn under the sofa and around the table and just and away and the two went tandem out of the room—Jack not reappearing at all; and after about five minutes Tom Quartz started solemnly back.”17
Roosevelt had long been a promoter of guinea pigs as first-rate pets for children; and he kept five in the White House: Admiral Dewey, Dr. Johnson, Bishop Doane, Fighting Bob Evans, and Father O’Grady.18 And then one afternoon a sixth materialized out of thin air. A few weeks after New Year’s 1904, the magician Harry Kellar put on a show for the president’s family. “I went along and was as much interested as any of the children, though I had to come back to my work in the office before it was half through,” Roosevelt reported to his son Kermit. “At one period Ethel gave up her ring for one of the tricks. It was mixed up with the rings of five other little girls, and then all six rings were apparently pounded up and put into a pistol and shot into a collection of boxes, where five of them were subsequently found, each tied with a rose. Ethel’s however, had disappeared, and he made believe that it had vanished, but at the end of the next trick a remarkable bottle, out of which many different liquids had been poured, suddenly developed a delightful white guinea pig, squirming and kicking and looking exactly like Admiral Dewey, with around its neck Ethel’s ring, tied by a pink ribbon.”19
Hearing about how President Lincoln had kept a turkey named Jack around the White House after sparing its life one Thanksgiving, the president adopted a one-legged rooster as a favorite pet, prohibiting the cook from even thinking about breaking its neck. Then there was the pet turkey which became friendly with the president’s two parrots. The Washington Evening Star reported: “There is no home in Washington so full of pets high and low degree as the White House, and those pets not only occupy the attention of the children, but the President is himself their good friend, and has a personal interest in every one of them.”20 As the White House usher Ike Hoover put it, “A nervous person had no business around the White House those days.”21
First Lady Edith Roosevelt tolerated her husband’s obsession with having live animals around him at all times.
First Lady Edith Roosevelt. (Courtesy of Theodore Roosevelt Collection, Harvard College Library)
The antics of all these White House pets made colorful newspaper copy. Once Algonquin, a spotted pony, was escorted to the second-floor family quarters to boost the morale of nine-year-old Archie, stuck in bed with measles; the disease had swept through Washington like an epidemic.22 Ecstatic to see Algonquin, whom he loved, Archie let out an Indian “whoop” and dived to hug his pet. Algonquin was so startled by Archie’s abrupt gesture that his legs buckled and all 350 pounds of pony slipped and fell to the floor. The loud thud sounded like a muffled gunshot blast. The whole Roosevelt clan rushed into the bedroom deeply concerned. When the president returned from California he mildly reprimanded Archie, saying that such suddenness was unwise when dealing with ponies; they spooked too easily. The comical episode is now remembered as another Roosevelt first—the first time a horse rode in a White House elevator.23
Then there was the famous Kansas jackrabbit affair, which rocked Washington. A Topekean had donated to Roosevelt’s White House menagerie two young jackrabbits from his home state. One day while being fed pellets, the rabbits escaped their cage. A wild scramble ensued. The president and his sons chased after them. Escaping from the White House lawn, the rabbits made their way to G Street and Twelfth Avenue, where they parted company, one heading east, the other west. “Newsboys and messenger boys joined in the exciting chase after the rabbits, and for a time business in that vicinity was practically at a standstill,” the Washington Post wrote in a long feature story. “Both animals were large specimens, and, as they spread out their long limbs, many thought they were young deer.” After hours of mayhem one rabbit was captured at Turelane and M Street N.W. The other made its way back to the White House as if wanting to be put back into its hutch. Instead, the president decided to let them both live in the White House shrubbery, “wild and free.”24
Roosevelt started tossing carrots to the jackrabbits whenever he wandered the White House grounds to feed nuts to the squirrels. Both T.R. and the grounds policeman, named Mr. Curtis, ensconced in a security booth just east of the White House entrance, used to hand-feed the squirrels. Before long the squirrels were as tame as the Angora house cats. Roosevelt would sit on the grass, and the squirrels would scurry up to him to be fed. The squirrels weren’t even afraid of the Saint Bernard, named Rolla, or the retriever Sailor Boy. Sometimes 100 squirrels would line the walk heading into the White House, waiting for the president to come out and apparently knowing that he had pocketfuls of nuts.25
Perhaps the most exotic pet President Roosevelt had was a spotted hyena (Crocuta crocuta) named Bill, from the plains of Ethiopia. Eventually, Bill weighed about 150 pounds. He had been given to Roosevelt in March 1904 by Menelik II, emperor of Ethiopia, who claimed to be directly descended from King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba. Menelik had brought with him to America such wildlife as elephants, monkeys, tigers, pythons, and rare birds to donate to the Lincoln Park Zoo in Chicago. But he insisted that Roosevelt keep the hyena pup and a lion cub as personal pets.26 Roosevelt donated the lion cub to the Bronx Zoo, but he kept Bill for a while, teaching it tricks, enjoying its high-pitched cackle, and letting it beg for table scraps.27
More than anything else, however, it was dog stories that the press loved. Whether it was Sailor Boy the Chesapeake retriever or Jack the terrier, President Roosevelt always seemed to have a canine friend nearby. He could have made a fortune writing stories about the White House dogs (on the order of later books such as Old Yeller or Marley and Me) for Outing. Even during important cabinet meetings about the Panama Canal or the Ottoman empire, Roosevelt would often pat a dog while he spoke. Sometimes he carried lunch scraps in the pocket of his suit coat to feed them as treats. One of his dogs, Pete, a bull terrier, ended up biting so many White House visitors that the president reluctantly exiled him to Oyster Bay. When Ethel’s bull terrier Ace got lost at Sagamore Hill one fall afternoon, a high-profile search was undertaken, as if for a missing person. Eventually the New York Times was able to run the headline “Roosevelt Dog Is Found.”28
Whenever a family pet died, Roosevelt buried it at Sagamore Hill in a special cemetery located north of the house and surrounded by native plants. An inscription on a memorial boulder there read “Faithful Friends.” Each buried pet had its name carved in the stone monument, and there was a bench nearby for the mourners. Little American flags were stuck in the ground, as if it were Arlington National Cemetery. In remembrance of Cuba, the famous dog of the Spanish-American War, the president had his named carved into the rock. Eventually, Roosevelt created an arboretum, arching over the burial site of his animal friends.29 Roosevelt’s idea of heaven was a place where all these pets would come and greet him in a grand reunion.
Between meetings, no matter the weather, President Roosevelt would play fetch on the White House lawn with his dogs.
T.R. with pet dog. (Courtesy of Theodore Roosevelt Collection, Harvard College Library)
II
That spring a debate raged in Washington regarding what to do with Alaska. More than 100 bills concerning Alaska were presented to the Fifty-Eighth Congress. President Roosevelt wanted virtually all of them—particularly those protecting wildl
ife—passed. The discovery of gold had caused a rush to Alaska; but Roosevelt hoped to impede development by creating reserves for the big game mammals at Fire Island (which he would turn into a federal game preserve in 1909). He insisted emphatically that harvesting Alaskan wildlife must be regulated, and that a smart plan for managing natural resources must be implemented for the vast territory. He also promoted a court system and infrastructure improvements for Juneau, Skagway, Sitka, and other cities. A variety of books on Alaska—notably Our New Alaska by Charlie Hallock (printed by Forest and Steam), A Summer in Alaska by Frederick Schwatka, A Trip to Alaska by George Wardman, and “The Merriam Report” of the Harriman Expedition—had spurred entrepreneurs’ interest in the land once derided as “Seward’s folly.” For the first time Americans were starting to see the acquisition of Alaska for $7.2 million (less than two cents an acre) as a steal. History had vindicated Seward’s judgment as, Roosevelt believed, it would someday vindicate his own attempts to save Alaska’s caribou herds.
Throughout 1904 Roosevelt also grew interested in the brown bears of Alaska, which could be found in every district. He regularly asked for reports from the Boone and Crockett Club about Alaska’s black bears, grizzlies, and glacier (or blue) bears. The polar bear, he learned, was found only along the coast, in ranges of eternal ice, and never below sixty-one degrees north latitude (and it was found at that latitude only when swept down on Bering Sea ice floes). Merriam reported to Roosevelt about the various sizes of brown bears he saw on the Kodiak Islands during the Harriman expedition of 1899. Roosevelt hatched a plan to take a steamer to Alaska and then hunt with an Aleut guide along the salmon streams of Kodiak in search of a bull bear. He even ordered rubber boots and rainproof slickers in anticipation of the journey. Roosevelt envisioned himself not only killing a bear but writing an article about Alaska for Scribner’s magazine. Besides the bears, Roosevelt also wanted the newly discovered types of wild sheep and caribou saved. His administration’s primary conservation policy initiative in Alaska from 1901 to 1904 was enforcing both the Lacey Bird Act and a wild fowl law (enacted June 6, 1900) for protecting eggs.30 In 1902 the Boone and Crockett Club, with Roosevelt’s support, helped Congress pass an act (32 Stat. L. 327) imposing seasonal hunting and bag limits in Alaska. As the Roosevelt administration structured game laws for Alaska, if you wanted to hunt, you needed a permit—issued by the Biological Survey. Only the secretary of agriculture could permit hides, trophies, carcasses, etc. to be shipped out of Alaska. The federal government under Roosevelt was seizing firm control of the last frontier.
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