The National Park Service has been working on the Theodore Roosevelt Initiative, a project designed to allow people Internet access to digital material about TR. The work is being done in the Badlands of Dakota Territory [later to be named North Dakota] where TR went to after his mother and wife died on Valentine's Day, Feb. 14, 1884. Material from other NPS sites with TR information, such as Sagamore National Historic Park will be part of the project.

Shanna Schoch, news bureau manager at the Dickinson State University, posted information about the Centennial Challenge Grant that furthers the Dickinson State University-Theodore Roosevelt National Park collaboration to digitize information about Theodore Roosevelt from National Park Service sites [including Theodore Roosevelt Island, Sagamore Hill; the inaugural site in Buffalo; Mt. Rushmore; and TR Birthplace in New York City]. It will also be hooked up to TR information from the Library of Congress - with all information available on the Internet.

Ms. Schoch wrote, "Theodore Roosevelt enthusiasts and visitors to Theodore Roosevelt National Park (TRNP) in Medora, N.D., will soon have more access to the complete collection of documents about Theodore Roosevelt and his time in the North Dakota Badlands, as well as other original documents related to the 26th President.

"Thanks to National Park Service Centennial Challenge Initiative funding, TRNP is receiving $50,000 in funding to participate in a collaborative project with Dickinson State University (DSU), Dickinson, ND, to digitize Roosevelt documents held at the park, and also collections from other National Park Service units dedicated to Theodore Roosevelt. DSU will match the grant funding, offering $50,000, and also will combine the data at the park with that from other institutions including the Library of Congress," she said.

In a telephone interview, Charles Markis, chief interpreter and Visitors services at Sagamore Hill, said he is looking forward to Sagamore Hill hooking into the system. He said, "If records are held by a big institution such as the Library of Congress, those documents have been digitized and have been shown before. This digitizing process makes documents from smaller sites available wherever they are."

There is another benefit to digitizing the material, he said, "Once they are reproduced we don't have to mess with the original document.. and still have it available electronically so that you, from your bedroom at 2 a.m., can do research with these original documents and have access any time you want. The bigger institutions have been doing that but smaller places like us don't have the facilities to do that. So in this project, Dickinson State University is taking the lead and are establishing this system. They have approached us and have made arrangements to come and digitize our material. We think they will come and use their equipment here. It is easier to send a person and equipment here rather than our sending the materials to them to make the materials available.

"And then important documents that people want to see will not get fatigued with overhandling," concluded Mr. Markis.

Ms. Schoch said, "The announcement of the grant came on the heels of the April 2008 unveiling of a special kiosk in the park visitor center that was installed as a result of a memorandum of understanding between the university and TRNP. The kiosk is a computer portal to the Theodore Roosevelt Center website which is being developed by DSU as part of DSU's Theodore Roosevelt Initiative. Additional kiosks may also be installed at other national parks."

Ms. Schoch continued, "The new kiosk was unveiled as part of our National Park Week celebration," said Valerie Naylor, superintendent of Theodore Roosevelt National Park. "This project will strengthen our existing relationship with Dickinson State University and give us the opportunity to be directly involved in the digitization project that will make Theodore Roosevelt more accessible to the world."

Ms. Schoch said the TR Center opened its first kiosk in DSU's Stoxen Library in September 2007. The website is intended to make Roosevelt's writings available to scholars, biographers, students, tourists and the world at large. In partnership with the Library of Congress, and with funding from the North Dakota legislature, DSU is working to digitize Roosevelt's documents and to organize and interpret them on the site in a user-friendly, aesthetically pleasing manner. The site contains numerous pages devoted to different facets of Roosevelt's life and career, including biographical information, TR's experiences in North Dakota, Roosevelt's documents, political cartoons and a scrapbook containing information and photographs of TR Initiative activities and North Dakota landscapes. The website also can be viewed from any computer with Internet access at www.theodorerooseveltcenter.org.

[The site is amazing in that it includes videos of DSU-TRC speakers at their 2006 and 2007 symposiums.]

"Through this collaborative project, the cultural experience of tourists, naturalists, students, historians and children will be broadened," said Theodore Roosevelt Center Project Director Clay Jenkinson. "Their experiences will be further enhanced by access to the holdings of the Library of Congress of the United States and to the holdings of Theodore Roosevelt National Park and other national parks."

On the TRC website Mr. Jenkinson provided a reason for the TRC being located outside of Medora, ND, in his essay Theodore Roosevelt's Footprint on North Dakota. He wrote, "Theodore Roosevelt lived in Dakota Territory on and off for about four years. Later in life, he tended to exaggerate the amount of time he spent in what is now North Dakota. If you actually add up the total number of days he spent here, it doesn't come to much more than a year altogether. But the impact of his Dakota experience on his adult character and outlook was huge. All North Dakotans know that Roosevelt said he would never have been President of the United States were it not for the time he spent here. He meant it.

"In North Dakota, Roosevelt underwent a transformation from high strung, snobbish, sickly exemplar of the eastern establishment to the American embodiment of the strenuous life, and in North Dakota Roosevelt realized that people who were not born into privileged lives were no less worthy of respect than their counterparts at Harvard or New York's most exclusive social clubs. That's what he took from North Dakota.

"Roosevelt also left his impact on North Dakota. The greatest conservationist in Presidential history, Roosevelt altogether designated some 230,000 aces nationwide as National Parks, National Wildlife Refuges, National Monuments, National Game Preserves, and, above all, National Forests. There was even a National Forest in North Dakota at one time," concluded Mr. Jenkinson.

Ms. Schoch explained, "The partnership with DSU is one of two TRNP projects to receive funding from the Centennial Challenge Initiative. The other involves the 218-acre Elkhorn Ranch site within the park, which Theodore Roosevelt called 'his home ranch.' Friends of Elkhorn Ranch will provide $25,000 to match an equal amount in Centennial Challenge funds. The park will enhance interpretation and resource conditions at the ranch site by installing new exhibits, developing a new brochure and other interpretive materials, and improving gates and fences.

"The National Park Centennial Initiative is a 10-year program to reinvigorate America's national parks and prepare them for a second century. The initiative includes a focus on increased funding for park operations plus a President's Challenge: up to $100 million a year in federal funds to match $100 million a year in philanthropic donations to the National Park Service," concluded Ms. Schoch.