Theodore Roosevelt was twenty-seven years old when he delivered his famous Independence Day speech in Dickinson in 1886. The New York assemblyman, writer, and informer first came to the Dakota Badlands in September 1883 to kill a bison. He got his buffalo but he also fell in love with the stark beauty of the landscape, which reminded him of the poetry of Edgar Allan Poe. Roosevelt invested in two ranches along the Little Missouri River, the Maltese Cross south of Medora (1883) and the Elkhorn in the remote Badlands 35 miles north of Medora (1884). Roosevelt regarded western North Dakota as one of the final frontiers in American history. He threw himself into the life of a cowboy, rancher, big game hunter, and deputy sheriff between 1883 and 1887. He developed many of his conservation principles here and gained a deeper respect for the hard-working men and women of the American heartland. The Badlands of North Dakota transformed Roosevelt from a New York "Dude" into the exemplar of the strenuous life. When TR delivered his Fourth of July oration here in 1886, he was becoming the Theodore Roosevelt of American legend, but the speech he delivered was surprisingly somber and his famous confidence was only beginning to exhibit itself.