How Yellowstone Was Saved by a Teddy Roosevelt Dinner Party and a Fake Photo in a Gun Magazine

How Yellowstone Was Saved by a Teddy Roosevelt Dinner Party and a Fake Photo in a Gun Magazine

A chill rain drizzled over guests arriving at Bamie Roosevelt’s midtown brownstone near the corner of Madison Avenue and East 62
nd
Street in December 1887. There weren’t many of them, but all had two things in common: they were New York’s most influential and rich social elite, and they all loved hunting big game. All were hand-picked by the hostess’s brother, Theodore Roosevelt, to facilitate his newfound interest in the conservation of the American West. That small gathering became the first domino in a long line that ended in the protection of Yellowstone, the first environmental advocacy group in the US, and the creation of the American National Parks system.
Teddy was in the nadir of his career. His 3
rd
place finish in the New York City Mayoral race foretold doom in the realm of politics. His North Dakota ranch was devastated by winter storms (later known as The Big Die-Up) and on the verge of collapse. His latest book on his Western adventures,
Hunting Trips of a Ranchman
,
received a middling review in the popular sportsmen’s magazine,
Forest and Stream,
which praised his prose but harped on “the author’s limited experience” (
Forest and Stream v.24, pg. 451).
T.R. was evidently so incensed at the aspersions on his Western manliness that
he showed up at the
Forest and Stream
editorial offices in New York
to demand to speak to whoever wrote the article. That very visit led to Roosevelt’s midtown dinner party.
Photograph of Theodore Roosevelt by Julius Ludovici, 1884.
Object number NPG.81.125
. Courtesy of National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution.
The evening may have gone something like this: first, he plied his guests with the rich bounty of his table and cellar with many toasts and courses. Roosevelt’s glass was unlikely to contain much alcohol (there was even
a later court case
about his abstention from drunkenness), but his hard-drinking younger brother Elliott and others may have partaken in
the bon-vivant cocktails popular at the time
. Then during the game course traditional to late 19
th
century gatherings, the conversation is adeptly steered by Teddy to their subject of common interest: hunting. Over yet another toast, Roosevelt proposes the formation of club named for America’s two most legendary hunters and committed to their shared values: fair chase, preservation of game, and “manly sport with the rifle.” Thus was formed the Boone and Crockett Club.
It could have ended there, with a private club whose members were required to have killed a large North American animal according to their own rules of engagement. But this group would grow in fame because of one of its founding members: George Bird Grinnell. At the time of this gathering, Grinnell stood out among the invited guests for his anonymity. He wasn’t a millionaire like Rutherford Stuyvesant or John Jay Pierrepont, or a famous man of the West like Albert …