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were far more impressive, he believed, than Buckingham Palace or the Vatican. (Both replica presidential cabins were exhibited in Chicago under the slogan that the ingenuous American “cuts his coat according to his cloth.”18) Roosevelt assumed the role of exhibit designer, and his archetypal western log cabin was packed with Davy Crockett relics and old-time hunting and trapping equipment.19 It was situated on a man-made island called the Wooded Island, in a man-made lagoon, and was next to the Japanese pavilion. The “cabin” staff hired a long-haired hunter as host. Schoolchildren could watch him perform public demonstrations that included curing venison jerky and constructing a box trap.20 Unfortunately, Roosevelt’s Boone and Crockett cabin had to compete with an exact replica of the Old Times Distillery of Kentucky, which gave out free whiskey samples. A New England cabin was also on the grounds, providing “good old-fashioned” seafood stews for the tasting. Still, owing to the Crockett memorabilia, Roosevelt’s cabin was a popular tourist destination.

The very announcement that Roosevelt was erecting a frontier cabin at the Chicago Exposition brought him a lot of mail. One was from an old hunting friend and guide on his trip to the Bighorns. In spite of its clearly anti-Indian, illiterate tone Roosevelt relished in the letter’s colorful slang:

Feb 16th 1893; Der Sir: I see in the newspapers that your club the Daniel Boon and Davey Crockit you Intend to erect a fruntier Cabin at the world’s Far at Chicago to represent the erley Pianears of our country I would like to see you maik a success I have all my life been a fruntiersman and feel interested in your undertaking and I hoap you wile get a good assortment of relicks I want to maik one suggestion to you that is in regard to getting a good man and a genuine Mauntanner to take charg of our haus at Chicago I want to recommend a man for you to get it is Liver-eating Johnson that is the naim he is generally called he is an olde mauntneer and large and fine looking and one of the Best Story Tellers in the country and Very Polight genteel to every one he meets I wil tel you how he got that naim Liver-eating in a hard Fight with the Black Feet Indians thay Faught all day Johnson and a few Whites Faught a large Body of Indians all day after the fight…Johnson was aut of ammunition and thay faught it out with thar Knives and Johnson got away with the Indian and in the fight cut the livver out of the Indian and said to the Boys did thay want any Liver to eat that is the way he got the naim of Liver-eating Johnson.

“YOURS TRULY” ETC., ETC.21

Another Rooseveltian scheme for the Chicago World’s Fair was to commission the artist Alexander Proctor to design and erect life-size sculptures of American wildlife on the bridges connecting the fairgrounds and lagoons. At Roosevelt’s behest Proctor, who had been raised in Denver, created life-size polar and grizzly bears, elks, cougars, and moose for public display. To Roosevelt, Proctor’s naturalist work, influenced by Darwin, was the highlight of the entire exposition. Both Roosevelt and Proctor insisted on exactness of animal composition. Wanting to honor his sculptor friend for a job well done, Roosevelt held a salutatory dinner for him at the Boone and Crockett cabin display in Chicago. In between toasts declaring Proctor the greatest sculptor of the American West, a man who understood the intersection of nature, wildlife, and science, the wildlife artist was asked to join the club. In coming years Proctor achieved some degree of renown for his bas-relief Moose Family, commissioned by the forester Gifford Pinchot in 1907 after Roosevelt became president.22 “For the men of the Boone and Crockett Club,” the historians Jesse Donahue and Erik Trump wrote in Political Animals, “Proctor was representative of the vanishing West, both through his work and in his person.”23

Roosevelt also got into the fair’s futuristic spirit by offering advice on the Forestry Building interpretive center, constructed with a rustic wraparound veranda made