Teddy's footprint in the Flathead

There’s no doubt that Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt spent time hunting and campaigning in Montana.

History books have documented well the 26th president of the United States’ hunting excursions in the Big Sky state, and Roosevelt’s own book, “The Wilderness Hunter,” details his hunting trips to the Thompson Falls and Kootenai regions of Northwest Montana.

Newspapers of the day followed Roosevelt’s swing through Montana in 1912, with stops in Helena, Missoula and other cities, as he campaigned as the presidential nominee for the Progressive Party. Roosevelt, who had served as president from 1901 to 1909, bolted from the Republican Party after he became dissatisfied with William Howard Taft’s performance as president, but both Taft and Roosevelt were defeated by Woodrow Wilson.

What’s far more obscure is Roosevelt’s connection to the Flathead Valley and the evidence that still exists of the famous president’s footprint in the Flathead, according to Bob Brown of Whitefish, a former Montana Secretary of State and state Senate president.

Brown, who has studied Roosevelt extensively, has connected many of the dots between the former president and the Flathead Valley.

Fran Van Rinsum of Somers has what are said to be an original pair of Roosevelt’s leather chaps that were given to his grandfather, Albert Van Rinsum, who hobnobbed with Roosevelt and his associates here in the early 1900s.

It’s possible that Roosevelt visited the Conrad Mansion during one of his trips to the Flathead, maybe as he campaigned for president in 1912. Alicia Conrad, the wife of Kalispell founder Charles Conrad, is said have told her circle of friends that the Conrads had lunch with Roosevelt at some point.

Brown said it’s also quite possible that Roosevelt hunted up the North Fork of the Flathead River. He’s still trying to document that account.

A tangible artifact that landed in the Flathead is the Maltese Cross cattle brand that was one of three brands registered to Roosevelt. Today that brand lives on at the Tutvedt ranch in the West Valley and is registered to Craig, David and Brian Tutvedt.

The Tutvedts acquired the brand in the mid-1980s when then-brand inspector Cliff Wolf mentioned to Paul Tutvedt that the historic brand was for sale.

“He knew the significance of the brand,” Craig Tutvedt said, recalling his father paid about $5,000 to register the brand.

The Tutvedts are allowed to use the Maltese Cross brand on the right hip of cows and right thigh of horses, but have rarely used it because of its large size, Craig Tutvedt said. Because one brand can be used in several ways, depending where it is placed on the animal, eight other individuals also have the Maltese Cross registered in their name. Most of them live in Montana.

The Maltese Cross was used on Roosevelt’s Chimney Butte Ranch south of Medora in Dakota Territory in the late 1800s, when Roosevelt ranched in partnership with A.W. “Bill” Merrifield and Sylvane Ferris. Roosevelt had come to Dakota Territory to hunt buffalo but quickly became involved in ranching.

The Maltese Cross cabin, the only remaining building of Roosevelt’s two Dakota ranches, is especially important in the annals of history because it’s where Roosevelt retreated after his wife, Alice, and mother, Mittie, both died on Valentine’s Day in 1884, just hours apart.

According to National Park Service accounts, Roosevelt put his thoughts and energy to ranching at Chimney Butte, which became known as the Maltese Cross Ranch.

During that time he “built a massive body, repaired his soul, and learned to live on equal terms with men poorer and rougher than him,” the Park Service archives note.

“He witnessed the decline in wildlife and saw the grasslands destroyed due to overgrazing. He later developed a conservation program as president that deeply reflected his experiences in the West where he had become keenly aware of the need to conserve and protect our natural resources.”

Roosevelt developed a keen friendship with Merrifield during those years at the Dakota ranch. In his writings, Roosevelt referred to Merrifield as his “manager and close personal friend and associate,” according to a biographical sketch of Merrifield from Dickinson State University’s digital archives.

For a dozen years, Roosevelt rode the ranges of the “big grass country” with Merrifield and other close associates.

It was Merrifield’s relocation to the Pleasant Valley area of western Flathead County, and later to the west shore of Flathead Lake, that brought Roosevelt to this area.

When Merrifield got out of ranching in North Dakota in 1891, he moved to Pleasant Valley, where he previously had bought a 2,000-acre ranch at the headwaters of the Kootenai on Pleasant Valley Creek. In 1901 Merrifield formed the Pleasant Valley Land and Cattle Co., and the ranch was considered one of the finest in Montana, Dickinson State archives state.

A few years later, Merrifield got out of ranching and purchased a home on the west shore of Flathead Lake where Mission View Estates now is located. It’s there where Merrifield and Roosevelt’s paths crossed once again.

When Roosevelt was elected president, Merrifield was chosen to take Montana’s electoral vote to the nation’s capital, and later Roosevelt appointed him U.S. marshal.

Merrifield became a successful fruit grower, with 3,000 fruit trees bearing various varieties, the Daily Inter Lake noted in January 1915.

Van Rinsum said his grandfather came to the Flathead in 1904 and managed the McGovern Ranch on the north shore of Flathead Lake, just a couple of miles from Merrifield’s lake home.

“I don’t know how he got tangled up with the bigwigs,” Van Rinsum said, “but he knew Merrifield and Teddy Roosevelt.”

Van Rinsum said his father, Gerrit Van Rinsum, passed on stories of how when he was still a teenager he took Merrifield and Roosevelt hunting and stayed at what is now the Kootenai Lodge on the north end of Swan Lake.

It was Van Rinsum’s grandfather who somehow was gifted what are believed to be Roosevelt’s original chaps, trimmed with buffalo hair and stamped with a size able to accommodate the president’s girth — 44 waist and 32 inseam.

While Van Rinsum has no documentation authenticating the chaps as Roosevelt’s, he met a gun collector a few years back who was authenticating a gun owned by Roosevelt and presented a photograph of Roosevelt wearing the chaps.

Ironically, it was Fran Van Rinsum, when he was Somers fire chief, who oversaw the burning of Merrifield’s aging home as a practice drill in the early 1960s. In its day, the Merrifield home, where Roosevelt spent time, was “known as one of the most hospitable in Montana,” the Daily Inter Lake said in 1915.

Another connection between Roosevelt and the Flathead Valley leads to Frank Bird Linderman, a politician, writer and sculptor who spent much of his life in the Flathead Valley.

“Linderman knew Teddy Roosevelt politically,” Brown said.

Linderman served in the Montana Legislature during the 1903 and 1905 sessions. He moved his family from Helena to Goose Bay on Flathead Lake in 1917.

Sometime around 1912 or 1913, when Linderman discovered that two of the brands Roosevelt used at his Elkhorn Ranch — Roosevelt’s second ranch in the Dakota Badlands — had expired, Linderman renewed the brands.

According to the Townsend Star newspaper, a “wide-awake secretary of the Montana Livestock Association happened to mention to Linderman that Col. Roosevelt’s Montana brands would pass into the hands of strangers unless he re-recorded them as required by law.

“‘Leave that to me,’ said Linderman. ‘Teddy was a charter member of the Montana Livestock Association and he wouldn’t want to lose his old brands.’”

Linderman proceeded to buy a “splendid” beef hide with the hair on, and had the two brands, an elkhorn and a triangle, burned into the hide. Then he had the furrier substitute a buffalo tail in place of the cow tail. The one-of-a-kind keepsake was sent to Roosevelt and hung in the trophy room at his home on Oyster Bay, N.Y., until he died.

On the back side of the hide, Linderman had printed a witty poem he wrote about Roosevelt.

“The story of these relics of Roosevelt’s old range days is an interesting one to every Montanan, for it had to do with a little act of kindliness and thoughtfulness that touched the Colonel (Roosevelt) deeply and more than ever cemented the bond of affection that bound him to [Montana], where some of the finest days of his life were spent,” the Townsend Star wrote.

Sally Hatfield of Kalispell, a granddaughter of Linderman, said her mother, Norma Linderman Waller, inherited a letter of thanks for the cowhide robe from Roosevelt, signed by the president himself. She believes her mother sold it to an autograph collector from New York.

The Townsend Star noted that Linderman said he had received a “splendid and characteristic acknowledgment” from Roosevelt in appreciation for the cowhide.

“‘He said it was ‘perfectly bully,’” Linderman told the newspaper.

Features editor Lynnette Hintze may be reached at 758-4421 or by email at lhintze@dailyinterlake.com.