The Wilderness Warrior - Douglas Brinkley [223]
Not all of Roosevelt’s travels were within New York. In June 1899 he headed by train to Las Vegas, New Mexico, for the first annual Rough Rider’s reunion. Las Vegas was situated along a stop on the Santa Fe Trail in New Mexico Territory, and Roosevelt had wanted to see the town for years, particularly the Spanish colonial-style plaza where Stephen W. Kearny once delivered a cracker-jack speech on manifest destiny during the Mexican War.* Western figures like Wyatt Earp, Doc Holliday, and Mysterious Dave Mather had spent so much time in the decorative adobes of Las Vegas that Roosevelt found every block intriguing. Billy the Kid had even once called the town home. By coming to the Rough Riders’ reunion, Governor Roosevelt was weaving himself into southwestern lore. (In 1940, Las Vegas, New Mexico, was chosen as the Rough Riders’ official reunion headquarters, with a museum dedicated to them.)
Besides making terrific press, Governor Roosevelt was able to see for himself the beauty of the rugged Sangre de Cristo Mountains he had heard about so frequently in Cuba from the Rough Riders. This was where the western edge of the Great Plains met with the southern edge of the Rockies. Las Vegas was in the heart of the Central Flyway, one of the four major migration routes in North America—this flyway followed the Great Plains and extended from Central Canada to the Gulf of Mexico. Tall ponderosa pines rose along the canyon rims, and some of the finest piñon, pine-juniper, and groves of gambel oak could be easily enjoyed. Over 270 bird species spent time in this ecosystem.51 Just seeing Swainson’s hawks—which often congregated in the short-grass prairie that later became the Las Vegas National Wildlife Refuge—was enough of an attraction to induce Roosevelt to travel more than 2,000 miles.52
Upon returning home from Las Vegas, as Roosevelt’s train went though Kansas, huge crowds greeted him at depots. “I cannot tell you how much impressed I was by the rugged look of power in Kansas men whom I met along the line of the railroad,” Roosevelt wrote to William Allen White about the famed journalist’s home state. “What a splendid type it is! I can see their faces now. Our country is pretty good after all!” 53
Only a portion of Governor Roosevelt’s energy was given to forestry, birds’ rights, and wildlife protection in 1899. For one thing, starting in January, Scribner’s magazine began serializing Roosevelt’s The Rough Riders, about his exploits in the Spanish-American War; in May it was published as a book and became a runaway best seller. With a vengeance, Roosevelt also wanted to start taxing corporations in New York to help finance conservation programs. Many disgruntled Republicans, including Boss Platt, insinuated that he was a traitor to his class. Such insults were music to Roosevelt’s ears. In May 1899, for example, he addressed the City Club of New York and didn’t mince words. “A corporation is simply a collection of men, who may do well or who may do ill,” he said. “The thing to do is to make them understand that if they do well you are with them, but if they do ill you are ever and always against them.”54
Such anticorporation speeches angered some Republican bigwigs, who worried that Roosevelt might paralyze the party. But such rhetoric put independent voters strongly on the side of Roosevelt’s “sock it to the rich” spiels. Throughout the summer of 1899, while Roosevelt worked hard on writing a biography of Oliver Cromwell (Lord Protector