Part 2, Chapter 4 Summary and Analysis

"Glory days in Medora" focuses narrowly on the time Theodore Roosevelt spent in the Dakota Bad Lands, assimilating to the life of the cowboy and helping to create the myth of the "real West." The illustrator Frederick Remington, discussed in the next chapter, makes an even larger contribution. The little town of Medora ought to be as celebrated as Dodge City or Tombstone, but history has passed it by, and it would be a ghost town today were it not the center of the Theodore Roosevelt National Park, protected from oil developers but filled with tourists in season. When winter comes, and everyone who does not have to be in Medora flees, the town is little changed from Roosevelt and Mores' time. Before writing this piece, McCullough stands on the overlooking bluff to admire the panorama and get get...