Theodore Roosevelt

Although he was from the East Coast, Theodore Roosevelt had a lifelong interest in the western United States. After his first wife died during childbirth in 1884, the young New York assemblyman relocated to a ranch in western Dakota Territory, where he considered pursuing a new career as a rancher and a writer. While there, he authored American Statesman: Thomas Hart Benton (1886) and began the multivolume The Winning of the West (1889–96).

During his presidency, Roosevelt advocated for the judicious use of natural resources. With a series of legislative acts, he laid the foundation for twentieth-century land-use policy and he also ensured millions of acres of land were federally protected.

Fittingly, this 1904 portrait is by ethnographer and photographer Edward S. Curtis, who documented the U.S. American West and Native American history and culture in The North American Indian (1907–30); Roosevelt wrote the foreword in 1907.