The Wilderness Warrior

by Douglas Brinkley

  On April 16, 1908, Roosevelt signed into existence Natural Bridges National Monument, his first such designation in Utah. These three natural sandstone bridges, spanning a desert canyon and isolated from any town or hamlet, met Roosevelt’s scientific qualifications for monument status because they were “extraordinary examples of stream erosion.” 42 Over the decades, Natural Bridges National Monument became a popular hiking and camping destination, especially for families. Together with National Geographic, Roosevelt helped launch the movement to save Utah’s splendid canyons from private development.

  Certainly, Roosevelt’s heavy-handed federalism angered people besides corporate bigwigs and disgruntled ranchers. Many westerners had long felt that businessmen on the east coast had treated the West like a colony, extracting wealth and resources without giving anything back. They were tired of the east coast stuffed shirts telling them what to do. As the episodes involving the Grand Canyon National Monument showed, they could also turn their blistering ire on the federal government. But as the historian G. Michael McCarthy argued in Hour of Trial: The Conservative Conflict in Colorado and the West, 1891–1907 (1977), there were plenty of westerners who approved of federal regulation of resources. At a public lands convention in Denver in 1907, for example, many of the attendees favored the Roosevelt administration’s deployment of rangers to protect national forests from wildfire throughout Colorado. They understood that Colorado was special because of its mountains, forests, and water resources.43

  The president of the American Scenic and Historic Preservation Society, Dr. George F. Kunz, also backed Roosevelt’s national monument initiatives every step of the way. Kunz and Roosevelt had been allies since the battle of 1899–1901 to preserve the Palisades cliffs in New York, and Roosevelt thought that Kunz was among the most cogent voices for protection of American scenery. One might almost name an American site at random—from Yellowstone to the Catskills, from Watkins Glen to Bunker Hill—and find that Kunz had fought hard for its scenic integrity. Scholarly, clear-minded, and committed to the cause, Kunz considered all significant ruins as part of the cultural heritage. He had been offended by Oscar Wilde’s offhand comment that the United States “had no ruins.” Whether Wilde had spoken out of ignorance, arrogance, or flippancy, Kunz knew better. The United States had Mesa Verde, Montezuma Castle, Chaco Canyon, the Gila Cliff Dwellings, and numerous other “ruins.” But Wilde was right in one respect: most Americans did not value their ruins as Europeans did. Rome, for example, celebrated its ancient ruins, such as the Colosseum, whereas by contrast, it had taken a small group of Colorado women, fighting tooth and nail, to protect the stunning cliff dwellings of Mesa Verde—and their battle had taken place largely unnoticed by America’s newspapers.

  According to Kunz, there were hundreds of antiquities sites, both natural and architectural, that needed preservation—places filled with arrowheads and pottery shards whose designation as monuments wouldn’t disrupt commerce in the slightest. Grateful to Roosevelt for raising the nation’s consciousness on this issue, Kunz became his strongest public defender, countering criticisms of the president’s conservationist and preservationist agenda. “Niagara Falls, Letchworth Park, the Hudson River, the Yellowstone Park, the Grand Canyon and the Colorado, the Agatized Trees, the Giant Redwoods, the Columbia River, and the prehistoric remains of the Southwest, are the poetry of our possessions,” Kunz wrote. “What nation is rich without a poet, and what country has such grand natural objects to inspire the poet as ours?”44

  Roosevelt and Kunz were deeply suspicious of anyone foolish enough to register any kind of concern about the creation of national monuments like Pinnacles or Natural Bridges. Legal and constitutional objections, Roosevelt was convinced, gave false legitimacy to a much baser desire: protecting entrenched interests. “The very luxurious, grossly material life of the average multimillionaire whom I know, does not appeal to me in the least, and nothing would hire me to lead it,” Roosevelt wrote to Cecil Arthur Spring-Rice on April 11. “It is an exceedingly nice thing, if you are young, to have one or two good jumping horses and to be able to occasionally hunt—although Heaven forfend that anyone for whom I care should treat riding to hounds as the serious business of life! It is an exceedingly nice thing to have a good house and to be able to purchase good books and good pictures, and especially to have that house isolated from others. But I wholly fail to see where any real enjoyment comes from a dozen automobiles, a couple of hundred horses, and a good many different houses luxuriously upholstered. From the standpoint of real pleasure I should selfishly prefer my old-time ranch on the Little Missouri to anything in Newport.” 45

  Medora, North Dakota, wasn’t a village to Roosevelt anymore, but an entire world unto itself, a time and place of magic. Memory is selective, and Roosevelt’s seemed to fasten on the pleasant shade, tranquil skies, and meadowlarks of summer, and to excise the long, cold Dakota winters. In fact, Roosevelt was arguably as proud of his exploits at Elkhorn Ranch as he was of any other chapter in his biography. After killing a buffalo in Montana, he had rushed home to New York City to cofound the Boone and Crockett Club along with his friend George Bird Grinnell. According to Forest and Stream, that was the opening salvo of the conservation movement. Now, in mid-May of 1908, President Roosevelt was scheduled to hold a summit at the White House on conservationism, with most of America’s governors present (a few states, including Texas, sent their lieutenant governors instead). To clear his mind of clutter, and prepare himself for the challenging conference ahead, Roosevelt, together with Edith, escaped to Pine Knot. Usually, at this retreat, Roosevelt liked to live strictly by himself with Edith. But now the Roosevelts’ houseguest—the only nonrelative ever invited to sleep at the cabin in Albemarle County—was Oom John. It had been a last-minute invitation, and Burroughs had accepted.

  At Pine Knot both Roosevelt and Burroughs enjoyed the first appearance of new organisms springing up from the old Virginian earth. Soon the cicadas would descend on the trees and the lightning bugs would take to the air. The land was clothed in new plants and wildflowers. Earthworms were plowing the soil, and the naturalists admired these lowly creatures with new eyes. But it was bird-watching that most pleasantly consumed their energy at Pine Knot. Owing to the spring migration, the two companions were able to identify seventy-five species.46 Always wearing a scrunchy suit, Burroughs was quicker to spot the birds; the more casually attired Roosevelt was better at identifying them by their twitters.47 The president was hoping to show Oom John a passenger pigeon, but that sighting never occurred. They did see a swamp sparrow, and rare warblers only four and a half inches long. Some of the warblers had migrated more than 3,000 miles from Canada to wintering spots in South America, and they were resting in Virginia for a few days on their return. Likewise, some of the blackpolls Roosevelt and Burroughs saw had just made a nonstop flight of 2,300 miles over water, perhaps from Venezuela or Cuba. “It was really remarkable,” Burroughs later recalled, “how well [Roosevelt] knows the birds and their notes.”48

  What a fine time the two naturalists had, poking around the countryside, marveling at migratory birds whose flight was directed, often, by the magnetic field of the earth. Oom John came to appreciate Roosevelt’s fair-mindedness and skill as a raconteur even more than he did during their Yellowstone trip of 1903 or their wanderings in the Catskills or their jaunts on Long Island. “The President is a born nature-lover, and he has what does not always go with that passion—remarkable powers of observation,” Burroughs wrote in Camping and Tramping with Roosevelt. “He sees quickly and surely, not less so with the corporeal eye than with the mental. His exceptional vitality, his awareness all around, gives the clue to his power of seeing. The chief qualification of a born observer is an alert, sensitive, objective type of mind, and this Roosevelt has to the preeminent degree.”49

  But Roosevelt’s penchant for turning everything into a competition grated on Burroughs, who was proud of his humility—proud that he didn’t boast. Roosevelt’s e
go, by contrast, would have made Napoleon flinch. As if engaged in a footrace, Roosevelt challenged Oom John over who would see the most species of sparrow or woodpecker, or who would first spot an eastern bluebird. Talking incessantly, Roosevelt would quote poetry by Longfellow and Tennyson, and evince surprise after forcing Burroughs to admit that he hadn’t memorized the precise verses. Too much time spent in the company of Roosevelt, Burroughs decided, could try the patience of the Old Testament’s Job. “I rather shrank from him,” Burroughs admitted later, “…his dominating qualities, his strenuousness—his mood always antipathetic to my own.”50

  Shockingly, to Burroughs, Pine Knot was genuinely rustic. It had no amenities aside from an old woodstove. His own Slabsides was regal by comparison. The “barn-like structure” of Pine Knot made it too primitive for a gentleman to sleep in.51 Oom John looked around and let out a great sigh. If Burroughs had had his former energy and confidence, a local inn in Charlottesville would have been hurriedly found. But as it was, bizarrely, Roosevelt had two northern Virginia flying squirrels (Glaucomys sabrinus fuscus) living indoors, and Burroughs remained unable to sleep because of the racket these nocturnal critters made (they were active at night because their large eyes allowed them to see in extremely low light). Roosevelt, however, seemed to genuinely enjoy their midnight madness, tossing them nuts the way he threw nuts to the scampering grays on the White House lawn. Delightedly Roosevelt watched the squirrels glide from the rafters to the bed and from the bed to the floor, like trapeze artists. As an evolutionist, he was intrigued by their membrane, called a patagium, which allowed them to glide as far as 240 feet through the air. Roosevelt erupted in disapproval when Burroughs gingerly moved the flying squirrels’ nest outside the cabin, and a quarrel ensued—those were Roosevelt’s indoor flying squirrels! How dare he! Eventually, Roosevelt compromised by placing the nest in his own bedroom, minimizing Burroughs’s interaction with the squirrels.52 Still, the high-pitched chirps continued to annoy Burroughs; even holding a pillow over his ears didn’t work. At one juncture Roosevelt himself was bitten by one of the squirrels; blood trickled down his hand from a real puncture wound. What shocked Burroughs was that Roosevelt seemed to admire the squirrels even more for this hostile act.53

  “Mr. Burroughs, whom I call Oom John, was with us and we greatly enjoyed having him,” Roosevelt wrote to his son Archie. “But one night he fell into great disgrace! The flying squirrels that were there last Christmas had raised a brood, having built a large nest inside of the room in which you used to sleep and in which John Burroughs slept. Of course they held high carnival at night-time. Mother and I do not mind them at all, and indeed rather like to hear them scrambling about, and then as a sequel to a sudden frantic fight between two of them, hearing or seeing one little fellow come plump down to the floor and scuttle off again to the wall. But one night they waked up John Burroughs and he spent a misguided hour hunting for the nest, and when he found it took it down and caught two of the young squirrels and put them in a basket. The next day under Mother’s direction I took them out, getting my fingers somewhat bitten in the process, and loosed them in our room, where he had previously put back the nest. I do not think John Burroughs profited by his misconduct, because the squirrels were more active than ever that night both in his room and ours, the disturbance in their family affairs having evidently made them restless!”54

  IV

  On May 11, 1908, two days before the participants were to arrive in Washington for the governors’ conference, Roosevelt arrived there from Pine Knot, with Burroughs at his side. Deciding to do something to honor the founders of western naturalist studies in America—Meriwether Lewis and William Clark—Roosevelt signed into being the first national monument in Montana. If John Muir could have a monument named after him in Marin County, then surely one should be dedicated to the great explorers of the Jeffersonian era in Jefferson County, Montana. Roosevelt had a deep-seated memory of reading Lewis and Clark’s diaries as a boy, and he recalled thinking that their 4,134-mile journey up the Missouri River and onward to Oregon was a more stirring epic than Gilgamesh. They had hunted in the prairies, wintered with the Mandan in North Dakota, traversed the Rockies, and navigated the length of the Columbia River to marvel at the Pacific Ocean. To Roosevelt, it was important to memorialize them with a natural site. He settled on a 600-foot-long and 400-foot-deep series of caverns in Montana.

  The Lewis and Clark National Monument, which overlooked the Lewis and Clark Trail along the Jefferson River, was Roosevelt’s salute to an earlier age of American exploration. Aside from setting aside a unique cavern, Roosevelt took distinct pleasure in reintroducing the two great American explorers to popular consciousness.

  On May 13, Roosevelt brought the Conference of Governors at the White House to order. As he had promised in Memphis during his inspection tour of the Mississippi River, nearly every governor summoned (from both states and territories) attended the conference.55 Roosevelt had asked each governor to bring along with him three competent advisers on natural resource management.56 The nine justices of the U.S. Supreme Court were also in attendance—something unprecedented for a blue-ribbon commission. In addition to the politicians and judges, Roosevelt had invited scores of biologists, geologists, ornithologists, and advocates of forestry science to offer their informed input. “Any right thinking father earnestly desires and strives to leave his son both an untarnished name and a reasonable equipment for the struggle of life,” Roosevelt had said, as a rationale for the conference. “So this Nation as a whole should earnestly desire and strive to leave to the next generation the National honor unstained and the National resources unexhausted.”57

  When Roosevelt took to the podium in the East Wing on the morning of May 13 for the opening session of the conference of governors, there was a palpable sense of unity among the attendees. The White House had given a multiple-course dinner party the previous evening, so the governors and the other dignitaries were in a fine mood. According to Plutarch’s Lives, Alexander was once asked if he craved any service and snapped in reply, “Stand a little out of my sun.” That’s how it was for Roosevelt that afternoon. Starting with Genesis, Roosevelt went on to relate how civilization began on the banks of the Nile and Euphrates. Organic evolution was always on the march. Leaping over millennia, be swung his oration quickly to the founders of America at Independence Hall in Philadelphia in 1776. Then, the natural resources of the young country, ranging from anthracite coal to vast timberlands to streams full of fish, had seemed limitless. But owing to unwise land management, America was losing its gifts. Utilization of mineral fuels and metals had transformed America into a steel empire, but overmining was turning the nation’s wilderness into an eyesore. “The mere increase in our consumption of coal during 1907 over 1906,” Roosevelt warned, “exceeded the total consumption in 1876, the Centennial Year.”

  Roosevelt’s speech was a kaleidoscope of times and places: here were Kentuckians felling forests and Mississippians watching as their riverine modifications washed the delta away. It was a quasi-public lecture on causes and effects of land misuse. He included many doomsday predictions about the depletion of natural resources (Jimmy Carter’s famous “malaise” speech of 1978 seems cheery by comparison). Here were new and frightening concepts: timber famine, choked rivers, denuded fields, obstructed navigation, exhausted oil fields. But Roosevelt also wanted to introduce phrases like “sustainable growth,” “renewable resources,” and “a future undiminished for our children” into the vocabulary of the twentieth century. “We have become great in a material sense because of the lavish use of our resources, and we have just reason to be proud of our growth,” Roosevelt said. “But the time has come to inquire seriously what will happen when our forests are gone, when the coal, the iron, the oil, and the gas are exhausted, when the soils shall have been still further impoverished and washed into the streams, polluting the rivers.” To Roosevelt, these questions didn’t relate only to the next century or his grandchildre
n’s generation. “One distinguishing characteristic of really civilized men is foresight,” Roosevelt said. “We have to, as a nation, exercise foresight for this nation in the future; and if we do not exercise that foresight, dark will be the future.”58

  Reading the Proceedings of the Conference of Governors is quite telling, in a number of ways. Andrew Carnegie spun out dozens of statistics about iron ore and copper production, and he ended his address with praise for President Roosevelt’s Reclamation Service but not a peep about national monuments or forests. Geologists offered charts of riches still in the ground. The new governor of California, George C. Pardee, spoke about clear-cutting redwood forests so as to export timber, not of saving stands like those preserved in Muir Woods and Mariposa Grove. Governor Charles E. Hughes of New York praised Roosevelt for his work in Albany in 1900 to preserve the Adirondacks, and Governor James O. Davidson of Wisconsin bragged about the pine, hemlock, oak, and maple of the Dells, even though the Dells had been brutalized by overcommercialization. But these were oratorical exceptions to the norm. Most of the presentations at the governors’ conference came from technocrats who were terrified by the prospect of America’s vanishing natural resources.