The Wilderness Warrior: Theodore Roosevelt and the Crusade for America (114 page)

Then, on May 6, Roosevelt struck again, in northern California. The
Antiquities Act was starting to take effect. Following the San Francisco earthquake, geologists came to California from all over the world to study the San Andreas Fault and the Lassen Peak volcano (the southernmost one in the Cascade range). What fascinated geologists about Lassen Peak was that it was not a typical mountaintop; it had a cluster of craters on its summit. Situated on the edge of the so-called Pacific plate, Lassen Peak was one of more than 300 active volcanoes that constituted a ring of fire in that part of the world. These volcanoes included Mount Rainier, Mount St. Helens, Alaska’s Katmai, Japan’s Fuji, and Indonesia’s Krakatoa. To Californian poets, Lassen Peak was just a weird and gorgeous mountain in Shasta County. But to concerned geologists, it was a mighty volcano about to blow. Recognizing that this volcano was both a scientific and a natural wonder, Roosevelt granted it national monument status. And it wasn’t just the peak that was saved: all the surrounding steaming springs, hissing fumaroles, and gurgling mud pots were saved as well. Roosevelt wanted the entire thermal alley preserved as a monument.

Deeming the Lassen Peak volcano area the Yellowstone of California, Roosevelt also created another national monument on the new park’s northeastern border, called Cinder Cone, that same May 6. From above, Cinder Cone looked like a 700-foot-high pottery wheel with a dent on top. According to the U.S. National Park Service, the volcanic cone has been “controversial” since the 1870s “when many people thought it was only a few decades old.”
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They were wrong. Created from volcanic cinders and loose scoria, Cinder Cone was the product of a succession of dramatic eruptions that took place about AD 1700 (or during a 300-year period). “The series of eruptions that produced the volcanic deposits at Cinder Cone were complex,” the U.S. Geological Survey reported in 2004, “and are by no means completely understood.”
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Cinder Cone was particularly striking for its complexity of color. At least five lava flows had occurred at the site, giving the cone a multihued, unweathered surface. Whereas Lassen Peak offered the exquisite beauty of Mount Shasta, Cinder Cone seemed unassuming but was a menacing geological freak. Cross-country skiers were easily fooled: under the silent snow of winter, Cinder Cone was a fiery inferno of red-hot lava—a fact best not forgotten. At night over Cinder Cone, the stars shone with a brightness that pierced through the dark clouds which often hung overhead. But at any given moment, pillars of fire could shoot like a dragon’s breath high into the sky from this volcanic hazard, washing away the dwarfish evergreen forests in a cataclysmic sweep of lava—nature at its
most brutal. Someday, scientists would have to more fully analyze the paleomagnetic reason for this.

On May 22, 1915, such an event happened at Lassen Peak National Monument, the crossroads of three biological provinces: the Cascades, Sierras, and Great Basin desert.
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After 27,000 years of dormancy, the volcano erupted, spewing rivers of lava and blowing dark ash all the way to Reno. An avalanche turned trees into debris. The dramatic scene became known as the “Great Explosion.” The only other U.S. volcano to erupt in the twentieth century was Mount Saint Helens, on May 18, 1980; this eruption was triggered by a 5.1 earthquake. A thousand years may pass before Lassen Peak or Mount Saint Helens erupts again—or it could happen next year, or tomorrow. That’s part of the mysterious appeal of such sites. As for Lassen Peak and Cinder Cone, they were upgraded to national park status in 1916 as a single unit under the Department of the Interior. Lassen Volcanic National Park is considered by many the hidden gem of the California eco-system.

IV

That June 10, 1907, President Roosevelt, with the Antiquities Act a success, delivered a major address on conservation before the National Editorial Association in Jamestown, Virginia. Roosevelt was appealing to the newspaper world’s better nature. The core of the grim problem, the president explained, was that America lacked “foresight” in managing natural resources. Factories polluted the air. Rivers had been turned into cesspools. Lakes were fished out. Crops weren’t being rotated. Deforestation without even a slight thought for the future was occurring in county after county. What a dump America could become! In a combination of defiance, humility, schoolmarmish lecturing, and guilt, Roosevelt pleaded with his hundreds of listeners to start a conservation revolution befitting the twentieth century. Journalists had a serious responsibility to the nation to shed light on the problem. By not covering his agenda for national forests they were in effect entering a suicide pact.

There was genuine passion in Roosevelt’s remarks. Moreover, he had chosen an ideal venue for this address. At Jamestown, where in 1607 settlers had established the first permanent English colony in the New World, Roosevelt could present himself as an advocate of conservation for the long term. A group known as the Association for the Preservation of Virginia Antiquities was trying to save 22½ acres of the historic sites made famous by Captain John Smith and Pocahontas—some of
these places had a real connection to Smith and Pocahontas; others were imagined to have such a connection. The group hoped to generate future tourism. But there was a problem in Jamestown: insidious erosion by the James River was eating away at the historic village. By visiting Jamestown, where red and white mulberry trees had been planted by the first settlers, Roosevelt was sending a strong conservationist message, which included both preservation of antiquities and national forestry. “We have tended to live with an eye single to present, and have permitted the reckless waste and destruction of much of our National wealth,” he said. “The conservation of our natural resources and their proper use constitute the fundamental problem which underlies almost every other problem in our National life.”
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But at this time Roosevelt also continued to push forward his reclamation projects. That same spring of 1907, Roosevelt appointed an Inland Waterways Commission to analyze America’s river systems, the development of water power, flood control, and land reclamation. To Roosevelt national monuments were his left punch and reclamation was his right punch. Together they formed the “Roosevelt Doctrine” of conservation. What they had in common was his fervent belief that the federal government, not individuals or corporations, was the best steward of the land. And what both sides of the debate admitted was that water was king. Therefore, everybody thought Roosevelt’s Inland Waterways Commission made perfect sense. It was perhaps the one thing Roosevelt did in 1907 that wasn’t contentious.

That September, shortly before Roosevelt left to take a journey for the Inland Waterways Commission down the Mississippi River, little Skip died in his sleep at Sagamore Hill. He had been a poem of a dog. The president had owned many pets, but none were as special as Skip. Nights at Sagamore Hill had often found Roosevelt reading history and novels with a snoring Skip in his lap or at his side. They had constituted a harmonious blending of two spirits into one. “We mourn dear little Skip,” Roosevelt wrote to Archie, “although perhaps it was as well the little doggie should pass painlessly away, after his happy little life.”
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At the end of September, President Roosevelt headed to Iowa for a journey on the Mississippi River. His wife had traveled down the Mississippi in the yacht
Mayflower
from Vicksburg to New Orleans earlier that year. It was now his turn. Fulfilling an old dream, getting to play at being a riverboat captain, the president lived on a steamboat for four days (October 1–4). His enthusiasm for the trip was inexhaustible. Boarding the boat in Keokuk, Iowa, he was joined by the former congressman John Lacey,
Gifford Pinchot, and other friends. It was the finest company imaginable, and piquant and witty remarks were the main fare. But no matter how interesting the conversation was, Roosevelt reserved the presidential prerogative of abruptly turning his head (like a lizard following the course of a fly) whenever an usual bird or a driftwood log appeared. The Mississippi was both the spiritual heart and the economic backbone of America. Roosevelt knew that a tree branch thrown into the Mississippi in Minnesota would float away toward Davenport, Cairo, Greenville, and Natchez; would reach the Gulf of Mexico and go past his bird rookeries and then around the Florida Keys; and might eventually be found by a fisherman in Senegal or Ghana.

Officially, this was an inspection trip on behalf of Roosevelt’s Inland Waterways Commission. Incredibly to Roosevelt, who liked infrastructure improvements to be made quickly, the Mississippi River levees, which had ruptured and collapsed in the flood of 1882, still weren’t properly fixed. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers was trying to control the wild waterway, but with only limited success. There was some repair activity: wing dams were being erected to deflect the strong current, and dikes were being built. But, as Twain had prophesied in
Life of the Mississippi
, the riverfront communities would “get left” to ruins the next time the spring rains were heavy.
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(That is precisely what happened in 1912, 1913, 1927, and beyond.) Nevertheless, sounding like James B. Eads, Roosevelt promoted river engineering over wild, scenic nature for the sake of enhanced commerce on the Mississippi River. Commerce ruled the river. Barges were the gods. The entire Mississippi watershed, Roosevelt believed, needed to be treated as a single unit from sources to stream mouths. Full coordination between the Army Corps of Engineers, Reclamation Service, Forestry Bureau, Division of Soils, Geodetic Survey, and Mississippi River Commission had to commence at once if there was to be even a remote chance of containing the Mississippi.
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The river floods were terrible, but Roosevelt liked to brag that the Mississippi Delta had the richest soil in the world. He believed that wherever a Mississippi levee system was built properly, and fears of flooding were removed, the delta would become densely populated, and Memphis and Baton Rouge would become huge transportation hubs. But if the levees weren’t secure, if the Mississippi was allowed to rampage, then settlements like Cape Girardeau or Helena would become shells of their former selves. “At present the possibility of such flood is a terrible deterrent to settlement,” Roosevelt lamented, “for when the Father of Waters breaks his boundaries he turns the country for a breadth of eighty miles
into one broad river, the plantations throughout all this vast extent being from five to twenty feet under water.”
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Meanwhile, there was plenty of horseplay and suspender snapping aboard the steamer. Every dinner of catfish, hush puppies, and wine was accompanied by bursts of laughter. Churning down the Mississippi, paddle wheel grinding on and on, naturally caused the men to think of Fink, Shreve, Grant, Pike, and all the rest associated with the river called the “Father of Waters.” It was fun to watch Pinchot plucking his thick mustache as he told comical anecdotes about his trips to the west coast conifer forests. And each town they passed was of historical interest: Hannibal, Quincy, Saint Louis, Sainte Genevieve, Osceola. All the way to Memphis, Tennessee, the USS
Mississippi
churned, past old Native American mounds, modern locks, and earthen levees built in ancient times.

Formally attired, wearing his top hat on the deck, sitting in a rocking chair and reading Inland Waterways Commission reports until the aperitif hour, Roosevelt prepared for his big address to the Great Lakes–to–Gulf Deep Waterway Association in Memphis. Basically, Roosevelt’s speech in Memphis on October 5 was a rehash of his conservationist address at Jamestown earlier that year. That October, in fact, marked Roosevelt’s last reclamation project, in Oakland, California. Pinchot had cleverly suggested that in May 1908 Roosevelt hold a White House Governors’ Conference to tackle all of America’s serious natural resources issues. Without
hesitation Roosevelt agreed. “It ought to be among the most important gatherings in our history,” Roosevelt said, “for none have had a more vital question to consider.” Staying in Memphis for only an evening, Roosevelt left the Peabody Hotel, a mid-South institution, for a stroll to the house where Ulysses S. Grant lived before the siege of Vicksburg.

President Roosevelt and Gifford Pinchot conferring about conservation while traveling down the Mississippi River in October 1907.
T.R. and Pinchot. (
Courtesy of Theodore Roosevelt Collection, Harvard College Library
)

Roosevelt liked the feel of Memphis and how the Chickasaw bluffs rose dramatically several hundred feet along the eastern bank of the Mississippi River. The bluffs afforded protection from floods and access to river commerce. When the Civil War began in 1861 about 1,000 steamboats had plied the river. Now, owing to the advent of railroad traffic, there were far fewer river vessels. But Roosevelt didn’t pine for the steamboat era, per se. His romanticism was always tilted more toward horseback riding on the prairie. With his type A personality, he didn’t like being confined on a boat. It made him feel antsy, and also helpless—the very thought of boiler explosions, snags, and sandbars made him restless. He was proud that his great-great uncle Nicholas Roosevelt, a gifted associate of the inventor Robert Fulton, had been the first to steamboat down the Ohio and Mississippi rivers in the
New Orleans
, traversing thousands of miles before the vessel reached its namesake city and anchored across from The Cabildo (where the Louisiana Purchase was signed in 1803, doubling the size of America).
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