This weekend we were supposed to head to Long Island to see our son’s Hofstra Lacrosse game, stay at the TWA Hotel, visit the Statue of Liberty, celebrate Easter and spend a little time in the city. Alas, COVID-19 has altered everyone’s plans and lives. Our son is now safely sheltering at home in St. Paul and the TWA Hotel stay will have to wait until later.
We usually get out to Long Island a couple of times a year and often have a bit of free time to see or do something besides the prerequisite lacrosse game. Sometimes we head into Manhattan or Brooklyn, but that’s a major time commitment and we don’t always have that luxury. For our visit this February, we did a little more travel planning than usual and headed to the north side of Long Island to Sagamore Hill National Historic Site on Oyster Bay.
Sagamore Hill was the home to Theodore Roosevelt from 1885 until his death in 1919. Called the “Summer White House”, the site contains his historic house, another house that is the visitor center with exhibits and nature trails that lead to the waterfront. To get inside Roosevelt’s home, you will need to purchase tickets for a guided tour. To ensure your spot, book ahead of time. No photos are allowed inside the house, but you can get a virtual tour through the website.
The house was built in 1884, with an expansion in 1905. Many rooms in the house have trophy mounts of exotic animals. Given that Roosevelt was a conservationist, "why was he such an avid hunter?" was a question that was posed to our guide. The guide told a story about Teddy heading out to North Dakota on the train. The belief being that the dry western air and the rugged life would help cure or at least manage the asthma that had plagued him since his birth. He also had grand, romantic notions of being a cowboy and rancher. He had been told that bison in ND were so abundant you could just open the train window and shoot them. Well, he didn’t see any from the train and after getting off in Medora, he didn’t see any bison for another 5 days, which got him thinking about the need to preserve the disappearing species. It didn’t however, keep him from acquiring a couple of majestic bison head mounts for his north addition. Do as I say, not as I do? I guess I still appreciate his focus on preserving public lands.
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