This Presidential Library Might Be 'the Loneliest'

The day his young wife and mother died, Theodore Roosevelt wrote in his diary that "the light has gone out of my life," and it was only through extended trips to the isolated Dakota Territory in the 1880s that he regained "the romance" of living. A library examining the country's 26th president will open next summer in the North Dakota landscape remarkably similar to what Roosevelt would have experienced: far from any city and surrounded by rugged hills beneath a vast sky, per the AP. The isolation that was so appealing to Roosevelt remains today, and it raises a question. How many people will visit a museum so distant from the rest of America?

The nearly 100,000-square-foot facility—rising from the flat, grassy top of a butte across a highway from Theodore Roosevelt National Park near Medora, North Dakota, a town with about 160 residents—might be the loneliest presidential center in the country. It's planned to open July 4, 2026, America's 250th anniversary. All living presidents have been invited. Library Foundation CEO Ed O'Keefe said he wants the library to be where "kids drag their parents," a setting for picnics, weddings, and even presidential debates. A path leads onto the library's sloping roof planted with grasses and flowers. Inside, enormous rammed-earth walls of layered colors represent the dramatic Badlands. "We like to say that the library is the landscape," O'Keefe said.

Roosevelt came to the Badlands to hunt bison in 1883. He invested in a ranching operation and returned multiple times over several years following the deaths of his wife and mother. Stories of his adventures live on, from riding with cowboys to knocking out a bully in a bar and apprehending three boat thieves. Roosevelt later said he never would have been president were it not for his time in North Dakota. Despite the library's remote location, boosters (with a $450 million fundraising goal) are hoping tourists visiting Mount Rushmore, Yellowstone, and Theodore Roosevelt National Park will add the library to their itinerary. And while there may not be constant crowds, "that's the magic of it," said O'Keefe. "You get a little more of the Badlands to yourself."