You will be riding in a wilderness environment.

 

And riders mount up to explore an area still best-travelled on horseback. All this is the legacy of President Theodore Roosevelt, who first visited and rode about this land in 1883.

 

Well, probably the most profound item that he wrote about constantly was the solitude that one can find riding through the badlands. He found the beauty, you know, interested, he wrote about the grimly picturesque badlands which kinda describes this area perfectly today.

 

Theodore Roosevelt came out here in 1883 to hunt for a buffalo or bison. It was his dream to get one possibly before they were all gone.

 

Roosevelt bagged his bison and went back east to a promising political career, not realizing he would soon return to the badlands. The Maltese Cross Cabin was Roosevelt's first home here. It was a refuge from personal tragedy and political disappointment. Today the badlands Roosevelt roamed and loved are a national park that bears his name.

 

We can not talk about conservation and national park service without talking about Theodore Roosevelt. During his term of presidency, he helped to establish five national parks. He also used a law, the Antiquities Act to set aside 18 national monuments.

 

Theodore Roosevelt National Park preserves a prairie ecosystem that's become increasingly rare. 

 

There's a couple of plain.

 

There are some things here Roosevelt wouldn't recognize. By the 1880s, bison had been hunted nearly out of existence in this badlands. Since they were reintroduced in the 1950s, the herd has grown. Perhaps the thing that has changed the least here is solitude. 

 

I love going out to backcountry and hearing the nothingness, the quietness and experiencing the same thing that Theodore Roosevelt wrote about.

 

He wrote of listening to the rustle of the cottonwood leaves, of winding his way among the barren, fantastic and grimly picturesque deserts of the badlands, a feeling and an attraction to the lonely freedom of the wilderness. That feeling is as real today as it was then.