The Wilderness Warrior - Douglas Brinkley [407]
What a pity that Congressman Lacey has been left out of most environmental history textbooks covering the Roosevelt era! With the exception of Char Miller, Hal Rothman, Rebecca Conrad, and Patricia Nelson Limerick, few western historians have taken the time to realize all that Lacey did to save prehistoric ruins, desert ecosystems, bird sanctuaries, petrified forests, plug-dome volcanoes, wildlife-rich areas, and national wonders. But Roosevelt, at least, understood that Congressman Lacey was the man, the shrewdest pro-conservationist legislator of his time. Lacey’s secret had four aspects: he was a committed outdoorsman, amateur ornithologist, and Indian scholar, and he wasn’t a credit monger. He championed places like Mesa Verde, the Petrified Forest, Chaco Canyon, and El Morro, even though he earned no votes in Iowa’s Sixth District for doing so—Lacey was, therefore, a true American patriot. The Pajarito region of New Mexico, in particular, captivated him with its ancient rock drawings of the sun, snakes, and deer. All the caves and ruins of the Zuni, Taos, and Acoma, he believed, needed to be saved. As for the Petrified Forest, the trees had hardened into a complete and priceless landscape. “Let these trees be protected from vandalism and they will endure forever,” Lacey pleaded with the Senate. “It is to be hoped that the public sentiment which has urged and warmly approved of the action of the House of Representatives in thrice passing the bill to set aside this land as a public national park will in the near future bring about favorable action in the Senate. That lover of nature, the President, will be glad to sign such a bill.”36
Just three days after Roosevelt signed the Antiquities Act of 1906, there was a strange event in Iowa. At the Republican county convention in Fairfield, a prankster let loose an elephant—wearing a banner that read “G.O.P.”—to rampage through the crowded hall. Mayhem ensued in the hall as the frightened elephant trumpeted madly about. Republican delegates fled through the windows and doors. According to the New York Times, one terrified politician broke an arm in the panic. When the elephant was finally calmed down and the shock of the event had subsided, there was a police inquiry. As it turned out, a group from the pro-Roosevelt and pro-Lacey wing of Iowa’s Republican Party had hired the elephant from Robinson’s Circus for the prank. “The elephant’s name is ‘Teddy Roosevelt,’” the Times reported, “and the convention was afraid of it.”37
At Lotus Lake in Long Island that June, Robert B. Roosevelt’s health was breaking down: he was seventy-nine and had many ailments.38 Reports circulated that he wouldn’t live long.39 Nevertheless, R.B.R. led a high-profile campaign on Long Island to replant white pine trees wherever any had previously been chopped down. Even on his deathbed, R.B.R. was engaged in life. Having already planted white pines at his own estate, he implored all his neighbors from Montauk to Brooklyn to do the same. Long before Franklin Roosevelt created the Civilian Conservation Corps in 1933, R.B.R. had started a regional forerunner on Long Island. It was a crusade for him, just as stopping the indiscriminate killing of birds and fish had been following the Civil War.40
President Roosevelt was at Oyster Bay on June 14 when Uncle Rob died. Coincidentally, the president had just had a species of trout named after