Since the doors opened on the Fourth of July, 87,821 participants have made the trip to the Badlands and walked into the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library.

They arrive from every corner of the country. Some plan on an hour. Most stay three to five – lingering in the galleries, doubling back to an exhibit that caught them the first time, drifting out to the breezeway to watch the light move across the buttes.

That number is the clearest evidence yet that a presidential library built into a remote stretch of western North Dakota was worth every mile. Thank you for being part of it.

From October 9 to 11, the Theodore Roosevelt Association’s 107th Annual Meeting joins the Theodore Roosevelt Center’s 21st Annual Symposium in Medora for the first-ever Theodore Roosevelt Convention, built around the theme Looking Back, Moving Forward.

More than 300 historians, educators, public officials, conservationists, and enthusiasts will gather in the Badlands that shaped Roosevelt. Expect author panels, keynote addresses, an exhibit hall, and guided tours of the Library, Theodore Roosevelt National Park, and the country around them.

The authors panel alone brings Candice Millard, Kathleen Dalton, Patricia O’Toole, and Lindsay M. Chervinsky to one stage. Joe Wiegand hosts TR trivia on Friday night.

Registration is $350 for adults and $200 for students and youth, and covers sessions, tours, meals, the exhibit hall, and receptions. Registration closes September 1, and Medora rooms fill fast.

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On August 20, General Guetlein of Space Force took the stage in Medora for the latest Carry a Big Stick Forum – on leadership, service, and the weight of decisions made under pressure.

The series takes its name from the proverb Theodore Roosevelt made famous, and it exists to put working leaders in conversation with the questions TR spent his life on. More than a century later, those questions have not gotten any easier.

Could not make the drive? The full conversation is online.

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David Hume Kennerly: In the Room – 60 Years on the Front Lines of History opens October 3 and runs through January 10, 2027.

Kennerly was in the pantry of the Ambassador Hotel when Robert Kennedy was shot. He photographed the war in Vietnam and won the Pulitzer Prize for it. At twenty-nine he became Chief Official White House Photographer for President Gerald R. Ford, with the run of the building and instructions to document everything. He has been photographing presidents ever since.

Join us for this special exhibition this fall.  Free to members, free with general admission or $10 to visit the exhibit without Library admission.