04.19.18

Hoeven Secures Commitment form National Park Foundation President to Help Advance Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library

WASHINGTON – At a hearing of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee this week, Senator John Hoeven secured a commitment from Will Shafroth, President and CEO of the National Park Foundation, to provide ongoing support for the development of the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library dedicated to the 26th President. The Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library Foundation is currently planning the construction of the library and museum, which will include more than 50,000 digitized documents and other archives from the Theodore Roosevelt Center at Dickinson State University (DSU).

“The National Park Foundation provides a margin of excellence that really makes a difference in terms of developing educational and cultural projects through philanthropic resources,” Hoeven said. “We’re working on a library for Teddy Roosevelt who ranched in western North Dakota before he became president, an experience that had a huge impact on his life. We’re trying to put together a coalition to develop that library. We have approved state funding for it, and we’re talking to the National Park Service and the Department of Interior about providing support for it as well. We appreciate the National Park Foundation’s involvement, and we look forward to their continued assistance as we pull this amazing project together.”

Earlier this month, the Theodore Roosevelt Center celebrated the scanning of its 50,000th document pertaining to Theodore Roosevelt after nearly 15 years of work. In March, the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Foundation decided to split the Theodore Roosevelt library and museum across two sites with the library on land owned by DSU and the museum in Medora. Construction on the library is slated to begin later this year and conclude in 2019.

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