The photos on this page were taken in North and South Dakota, several of them
in Theodore Roosevelt National Park.  Pres. Roosevelt first visited the Badlands
of North Dakota as a young man, in 1883.  He fell in love with the area, bought an
interest in a cattle ranch, and actively ranched there for several years.
The Dakotas
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Friday's Journal
Later, as president, he developed a conservation program that deeply reflected
his experiences in the West.  During his time there, he became keenly aware of
the need to conserve and protect natural resources.  His time in North Dakota
helped shape a conservation policy from which the nation still benefits today.
I would not have been president had it not been for my experience
in North Dakota.  It was here that the romance of my life began.
The farther one gets into the wilderness, the greater
is the attraction of its lonely freedom.
~  ~  ~
Life is a great adventure...accept it in such a spirit.
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 have still further impoverished and washed into the streams,
polluting the rivers, denuding the fields and obstructing navigation.
Nowhere, not even at sea, does a man feel more lonely than when
riding over the far-reaching, seemingly never-ending plains.  Their
vastness and melancholy monotony have a riveting fascination.
I recognize the right of this generation to develop the natural
resources of our land; but I do not recognize the right to waste them,
or to rob, by wasteful use, the generations that come after us.
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
After nightfall, the river gleams like running quicksilver and the moonbeams play
over the plateaus.  The Badlands seem to be stranger and wilder than ever, the
silver rays turn the country into a kind of grim and marvelous fairyland.
No one cares how much you know until they know how much you care.
The quotes are all from Pres. Theodore Roosevelt.