Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library takes shape amid Badlands hills

(14 Oct 2025)
RESTRICTION SUMMARY:

ASSOCIATED PRESS
Medora, North Dakota– 7 October 2025
1. Various construction at sire of Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library
2. SOUNDBITE (English) Ed O'Keefe, Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library Foundation CEO:
“Theodore Roosevelt first came to the Badlands in 1883 to hunt a bison. He successfully hunted that bison, but he learned a bigger lesson while he was here. It awoke his conservation ethos, and today, his private ranch, the Elkhorn Ranch, is actually a part of Theodore Roosevelt National Park, which is perfectly framed by Theodore Roosevelt's Presidential Library behind me.”

ASSOCIATED PRESS
Dickinson, North Dakota – 7 October 2025
3. Various decorations at Theodore Roosevelt Center
4. SOUNDBITE (English) William Hansard, Public historian:
“Roosevelt’s time in Dakota Territory was really meaningful to him because it helped him understand regular people better. He will say it took the snob out of him. Obviously it was also really important because it helped him heal from his depression, his grief following the deaths of his wife and mother. And it's also important to him just because he enjoys the adventures of being a cowboy and a ranchman from beating up a bully to capturing boat thieves. He has a lot of great adventures in Dakota Territory.

ASSOCIATED PRESS
Medora, North Dakota– 7 October 2025
5. Theodore Roosevelt National Park sign
6. Theodore Roosevelt statue
7. SOUNDBITE (English) Ed O'Keefe, Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library Foundation CEO:
“I mean the destination is the journey, right? Theodore Roosevelt National Park is the only park named for a person, let alone a president. And every single time I’ve been out here there’s someone in the park who is going through something hard in life. They have a health crisis in their family, or they're someone getting divorced. And they come here much like Theodore Roosevelt did to commune with nature. To really see the beauty of this spectacular place and to find solitude and resilience to move on through life’s inevitable trouble. “
8. Various Badlands nature scenes

ASSOCIATED PRESS
Dickinson, North Dakota – 7 October 2025
9. SOUNDBITE (English) William Hansard, Public historian:
“Roosevelt loved North Dakota so much and saw the beauty in North Dakota's landscape and the beauty in its people. Roosevelt loved North Dakota and North Dakotans and so it’s only right that we return that love by honoring his legacy here."

ASSOCIATED PRESS
Medora, North Dakota– 7 October 2025
10. Library under construction amid hills at sunset
STORYLINE:
The day his young wife and mother died, Theodore Roosevelt wrote in his diary that “the light has gone out of my life.”

Roosevelt restored his spirit only through the extended trips he took to the isolated Dakota Territory, roaming the Badlands, hunting big game and raising cattle. He later said the Badlands was where “the romance of my life began.”

A library examining the country’s 26th president will open next summer in the North Dakota landscape remarkably similar to what Roosevelt would have experienced – far from any city and surrounded by rugged hills beneath a vast sky.

The nearly 100,000-square-foot facility near Medora, North Dakota, is planned to open July 4, 2026, America's 250th anniversary. All living presidents have been invited.

The library rises from the flat, grassy top of a butte across a highway from Theodore Roosevelt National Park.

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