A Home on the Little Missouri

Elkhorn Ranch 1886

Theodore Roosevelt

Quick Facts

Location:

Elkhorn Ranch Trail

When Roosevelt returned to the Badlands, he no longer stayed at his Maltese Cross cabin. He spent most of his time at the quiet Elkhorn Ranch. If he wasn't on a hunting trip or leading a roundup along the Little Missouri River, he was sitting at his Elkhorn writing desk writing about his experiences. Roosevelt paints the picture of what life was like on the Elkhorn Ranch through his books and personal letters. From his writings, you can visualize how the home was situated as the view from the veranda is described. You are truly seeing what Roosevelt saw over 100 years ago; Roosevelt wrote in Ranch Life and the Hunting Trail. 

“My home ranch lies on both sides of the Little Missouri. The nearest ranch above me being about 12 and the nearest below me about ten miles distant. The general course of the stream here is northerly, but while flowing through my ranch it takes a great westerly reach of some three miles, while the in is always between chains of steep high bluffs. 

Half a mile or more apart, the stream twists down through the valley in long sweeps, leaving over wooded bottoms, first on one side and then on the other, and in an open glade among the thick growing timber stands the long, low house of hewn logs. Just in front of the ranch veranda is a line of old cottonwoods that shade it during the fierce heats of summer, rendering it always cool and pleasant. 

But few feet beyond these trees comes the cut off bank of the river, through whose broad, sandy bed the shallow stream whines as if lost, except when a freshet fills it from brim to brim with foaming yellow water. The bluffs that, while in the river valley, curve back and semicircles rising from its alluvial bottom, generally as abrupt cliffs but often as steep grassy slopes that lead up to great level plateaus. 

And the line is broken every mile or two by the entrance of a coulee or dry creek, we said branches may be 20 miles back above us, where the river comes round the bend. The valley is very narrow, and the high buttes bounding it rise sheer and barren, it to scout hill peaks and naked knife blade ridges. The other buildings stand in the same open glade with the ranch house. The dense growth of cottonwoods and matted thorny underbrush making a wall all about, through which we have chopped our wagon roads and trodden out our own bridle paths.” 

In Hunting Trips of a Ranch Man, he wrote: 

“My home ranch house stands on the river brink from the low, long veranda shaded by leafy cottonwoods. One looks across sandbars and shallows to a strip of meadowland, behind which rises a line of sheer cliffs and grassy plateaus. This veranda is a pleasant place in the summer evenings, when a cool breeze stirs along the river and blows in the faces of the tired men who low back in the rocking chairs. 

What American does not enjoy a rocking chair, book in hand? Though they do not often read the books, but rock gently to and fro, gazing sleepily out at the weird looking buttes opposite until their sharp outlines grow indistinct and purple in the afterglow of the sunset. The story high House of hewn Logs is clean and neat, with many rooms so that one can be alone if one wishes to.”