How the Library Fits in the Presidential Library System

Theodore Roosevelt died at Sagamore Hill, his home on Long Island, on January 6, 1919. Twenty years later, in 1939, his distant cousin Franklin D. Roosevelt became the first president to donate his papers to the federal government. In 1955 Congress passed the Presidential Libraries Act, and today the National Archives runs sixteen presidential libraries, from Herbert Hoover through Joseph R. Biden Jr.

Presidents before Hoover were never part of that system. Theodore Roosevelt went more than a century without a presidential library at all.

Like those of most presidents before Hoover, Roosevelt’s papers are spread across many institutions. The largest collection is at the Library of Congress. Harvard’s Houghton Library holds another major collection, and Sagamore Hill, the American Museum of Natural History and dozens of smaller archives hold more.

The Theodore Roosevelt Center at Dickinson State University, the Library’s archives partner, has spent years bringing digital copies of those documents together in one free online collection.

The Library tells Roosevelt’s whole story, in the landscape that shaped him. Roosevelt came to the Dakota Badlands in 1883 to hunt bison. He soon invested in cattle ranching here, and later said he never would have been president without his experiences in North Dakota. The galleries trace his life, leadership and legacy through original artifacts, films and hands-on exhibits, steps from the national park that bears his name.

Campfire, the Library’s AI virtual historian, lets anyone explore Roosevelt’s own words, drawing on the Theodore Roosevelt Center’s digitized collection.