At an exposition in Buffalo, New York, September 6, 1901, an anarchist shot President McKinley. Vice President Roosevelt, on vacation in Vermont with his family, rushed to McKinleys side. When the doctors announced the Presidents improvement, a relieved Roosevelt returned to his family, then in New Yorks Adirondacks. However, McKinley took a turn for the worse and died. On September 14, 1901, Roosevelt was sworn in as President. His fears realized, Senator Hanna exclaimed, that damned cowboy is President of the United States!

During the dark days following the assassination, the popular magazine Century ran a piece to comfort the nation about the new President. Anonymously written by An Old Acquaintance, the article said:

Born of Northern father and Southern mother; commingling in his veins the blood of the English, Dutch, Scotch, and Huguenots; reared in New York, and educated in New England; living a part of his life in the far West, and a part in Washington, where all sections meet on a common plain, Theodore Roosevelt is the most catholic, cosmopolitan, and non-sectional American in public office since Henry Clay.

The article went on to note Roosevelts somewhat exuberant enthusiasm but assured the readers that Roosevelt was a kind-hearted man, yet a rigid disciplinarian, and will demand faithful and efficient discharge of public duties by public officials. 1 The nation would soon grow to love him.

Throughout his two-term presidency, Roosevelt identified conservation of natural resources as the most pressing problem in America: As I have said elsewhere, conservation of natural resources is the fundamental problem. Unless we solve that problem it will avail little to solve all others.2 Indeed, conservation was the first issue that Roosevelt addressed upon assuming the presidency;3 upon leaving McKinleys funeral, Roosevelt met with Gifford Pinchot and Frederick H. Newell, who would lead Roosevelts reclamation efforts, to begin planning a national conservation strategy. Conservation was also one of the last issues he addressed; on March 2, 1909, just two days before the inauguration of President Taft, Roosevelt was still protecting land. On March 2, he established the Zuni National Forest and the Mount Olympus National Monument.

In his first message to Congress on December 3, 1901, Roosevelt proclaimed: The Forest and water problems are perhaps the most vital internal problems in the United States.4 As remembered years later by Pinchot, Conservation became the characteristic and outstanding policy of T.Rs Administration, and has been more generally accepted as such ever since.5 These are bold comments when one considers that during his two terms of office Roosevelt took on corporate monopolies and trusts, engaged in ending unprecedented labor problems, won the Nobel Peace Prize for resolving the war between Russia and Japan, revitalized the military, settled international disputes involving Venezuela and Costa Rica, revitalized and redefined the Monroe Doctrine, gave America a square deal, and built the Panama Canal.

At the turn of the 20th century, U.S. policy favored liquidation of real property and natural assets. The Mineral Land Act of 1866 offered free land in exchange for mineral development. The Timber Culture Act of 1873 granted 160 acres to any person who would cultivate timber on 40 acres of the land. The Desert Land Act of 1877 gave arid land at reduced prices to anyone who would irrigate it. The Timber and Stone Act of 1878 allowed land to be sold at discount to promote homesteading. The Homestead Act allowed 160 acres to any one who would homestead.

In the West, federal land was there for the taking. In part, the disposal of resources was driven by the federal governments desire to settle the Midwest and then the West. It also was driven by ignorance and the historically predominant view that the countrys assets were inexhaustible.

As of 1901, approximately one-half of the timber in the United States had been cut, an incalculable amount of precious topsoil had been washed into seas.6 Thousands of animals were slaughtered for sport and business. Under the prevailing leasing system, private exploitation of minerals, timber, and water power sites went on apace, even in the so called reserves. 7 Further, under and in violation of the law, grasslands within the forest reserves were ruthlessly overgrazed.8 Important historic and archeological sites on federal land were freely open to vandalism, profiteering, and destruction. To exacerbate a bad situation, the U.S. policies provided an environment for abuse and corruption and great fraud upon the public domain existed.9 About this time, John Muir wrote:

The axe and the saw are insanely busy, chips are flying thick as snowflakes, and every summer thousands of acres of priceless forests, with their underbrush, soil, springs climate, scenery, and religion are vanishing.

All sorts of local laws and regulations have been tried found wanting, and the costly lessons of our experience, as well as that of every civilized nation, show conclusively that the fate of the remnant of our forests is in the hands of the federal government, and that if the remnant is to be saved at all, it must be saved quickly.
Any fool can destroy trees. It took more than three thousand years to make some of the trees in these Western woods, - trees that are still standing in perfect strength and beauty, waiving and singing in the mighty forests of the Sierra. Through all the wonderful, eventful centuries since Christs time and long before that God has cared for these trees, saved them from drought, disease, avalanches, and a thousand straining, leveling tempests and floods; but he cannot save them from fools, - only Uncle Sam can do that.10

Uncle Sam came in the form of President Roosevelt. When Roosevelt assumed the reins of leadership, 560 million federally owned acres in the lower 48 states remained open to entry, exploitation, and settlement.11 Over the next seven years, Roosevelt would close millions of these acres. In the long term, Roosevelts policies and actions transformed public opinion and governmental policies on federal lands and resources.

1 An Old Acquaintance, The Personality of President Roosevelt, Century (Nov. 1901).
2 Pinchot, Gifford, Breaking New Ground (Island Press 1998), at 345.
3 Roosevelt, Theodore, An Autobiography (1913), Ch. XI.
4 Roosevelt, Theodore, An Autobiography (1913), Ch. XI.
5 Pinchot, Gifford, Breaking New Ground (Island Press 1998), at 353.
6 Cutright, Paul Russell, Theodore Roosevelt The Making of a Conservationist ((Univ. of Illinois Press 1985), at 212.
7 Harbaugh, William Henry, Power and Responsibility The Life and Times of Theodore Roosevelt (Farr, Straus, & Cudahy 1961) at 320.
8 Harbaugh, William Henry, Power and Responsibility The Life and Times of Theodore Roosevelt (Farr, Straus, & Cudahy 1961), at 324.
9 Roosevelt, Theodore, December 3, 1907 Message to Congress.
10 Muir, John, Our National Parks (Houghton Mifflin Co. 1891), at 364 - 65.
11 Peffer, E. Louise, The Closing of the Public Domain (Stanford Univ. Press 1951) at 8.