The Place

In April 1886 Theodore Roosevelt tracked down three desperadoes who had stolen his boat from the Elkhorn Ranch and marched them to justice in Dickinson, in one of the greatest adventures of his life. His feet were so battered from his long overland trek from the Killdeer Mountains in the springtime that he sought the help of the city’s pioneer physician Dr. Victor Hugo Stickney, who said TR was all teeth and eyes, but even so he seemed a man unusually wide awake. Stickney invited Roosevelt to give an address during Dickinson's first-ever Independence Day celebration. The city was just six years old in 1886. Accompanied by A.T. Packard, the editor of Medora’s “Bad Lands Cow Boy,” Roosevelt rode in on a freight train from Medora in time for the grand parade. Afterwards Justice of the Peace Warren Starr read aloud the Declaration of Independence. Then Theodore Roosevelt stepped forward here, on what became the Stark County Courthouse lawn, to give his first great national speech.

Dickinson, North Dakota · United States