"I think it would be a terrible shame for short-term gain to destroy this iconic site," Tweed Roosevelt said. "It would be a travesty to ruin this place over a few bucks."
Theodore Roosevelt traveled to the North Dakota badlands in 1883 to hunt, and during the trip he decided to raise cattle and bought a ranch. He returned the next year, several months after his mother and first wife, Alice, died on the same day, and established the Elkhorn Ranch, which sits along the Little Missouri River about 25 miles east of the Montana border.
Roosevelt only lived in the area a short time. He remarried two years later and settled into a new home he had built on Long Island, in his native New York. But the time he spent in the picturesque but unforgiving badlands deepened Roosevelt's respect and admiration for nature, and later as president he served as an early champion of conservationism, setting aside millions of acres for national forests and wildlife refuges.
"This was a place he loved dearly and where he honed his ideas of conservation," Tweed Roosevelt said of the ranch. "It's the cradle of conservation."
As part of the national park, the Elkhorn Ranch site is off limits to development. The 5,100-acre ranch just across the river was not, though, when the family that owned it put it up for sale a few years ago. With $500,000 donated by wildlife and conservation groups who feared housing complexes would spring up, Congress authorized the purchase of the plot for $5.3 million in 2007.
Cattle have been grazing on the eight-square-mile plot and seven oil wells have been pumping crude oil there for decades, and under the terms of the purchase, that would be allowed to continue, as would further oil exploration. The government decided not to buy the rights to the oil and minerals below the surface, and a Miles City, Mont., businessman who noticed swooped in and bought the underground rights to a large tract near the Elkhorn Ranch.
Roger Lothspeich and his fiancee, Peggy Braunberger, spent about four years arguing they have the right to mine gravel and other minerals at the site, and the Forest Service is fielding public comments on a proposed plan for a 25-acre gravel pit about a mile from Roosevelt's former home.
Lothspeich's plan appears to pass muster in terms of how it would affect the area's air and water quality and wildlife, as well as how much noise and dust it would create, said Forest Service district supervisor Ron Jablonski. A permit could be issued for the gravel project within the next three months, he said.
Valerie Naylor, the superintendent of the national park, said the Elkhorn Ranch site is a popular attraction for many visitors who want to experience the area the way Theodore Roosevelt did.
"It's like the Walden Pond of the West and we need to preserve that experience," Naylor said.
