• 1881 - Elected to the New York State Assembly
• 1896 - Assistant Secretary of the Navy
• 1898 - helped organize the "Rough Riders," a cavalry force in the Spanish American war
• 1898 - Governor of New York
• 1901 - Vice President
• 1901-1909 - 26th president or the United States
• 1903 - Spends 3 days and nights camping with John Muir in Yosemite.
• 1905 - Helped to create the United States Forest Service and then appointed respected forester, Gifford Pinchot, as the first head of the agency.
• 1908 - Called a conference on the conservation of natural resources. A National Conservation Commission was created as a result of this conference, and 41 states subsequently established conservation commissions.
• 1908 - Roosevelt declined to run for another term as President, deferring to William Howard Taft in 1908. He later regretted this decision but failed to unseat Taft by running under the Reform Party's Bull Moose Ticket.

T.R. and John Muir at Glacier Pt. in Yosemite

He was both a hunter and conservationist. Sometimes better know for his hunting (including a Buffalo hunt in N Dakota), he passed the Park Protection Act, widely credited with saving the wildlife of Yellowstone from total destruction from poachers, and reintroducing buffalo in the park to keep them from going extinct. He was, as naturalist John Burroughts saw, "As far removed from the game butcher as day is from night."

Roosevelt's signing of The Newlands Act in 1902 placed the federal government in an activist role in water management and reclamation. He created the US Forest Service in 1905.

According to Brinkley¹:
"In 1903, within hours of leaving from a Yosemite camping trip with John Muir he telegraphed his Interior Secretary, Ethan Hitchcock and ordered protected status for a larger swath of California's great redwood groves."

On the trip with Roosevelt, Muir told him about how California was exploiting the park's resources (allowing logging, livestock, etc.), which led to Roosevelt's signing a bill in 1906 to take control of Yosemite Valley (along with the Mariposa grove of giant sequoia) out of the hands of the state and into the hands of the federal government.

Roosevelt also used the 1906 Antiquities Act to extend federal control over the West's scenic wonders. Although the law had been enacted to protect Native American artifacts and relics, which were being systematically looted from archeological sites, Roosevelt expanded its use to preserve historic landmarks.

Roosevelt created 150 national forests, 18 national monuments (Two of which, Washington's Olympic and the Grand Canyon became national parks), 5 other national parks and 51 wildlife refuges.
He protected 230 million acres of Americas wildlands often ignoring congress and demands from railroad, oil and timber bigwigs.

In his 1916 book, "A Book-Lover's Holidays in the Open", he castigates those "short-sighted men who in their greed and selfishness will, if permitted, rob our country of half its charm by their reckless extermination of all useful and beautiful wild things". He goes on to say, "Our duty to the whole, including the unborn generations, bids us restrain an unprincipled present-day minority from wasting the heritage of these unborn generations. The movement for the conservation of wild life and the larger movement for the conservation of all our natural resources are essentially democratic in spirit, purpose, and method."

Family:
Claes Maartenszen van Rosenvelt, the immigrant ancestor of the Roosevelt family, arrived in New Amsterdam (present day New York City) some time between 1638 and 1649.
Theodore's father, known in the family as "Thee", was a New York City philanthropist, merchant, and partner in the family glass-importing firm Roosevelt and Son.

His mother, Mittie Bulloch, was a Southern belle from a slave-owning family in Roswell, Georgia. She had Ulster Scots ancestors who emigrated from Glenoe, County Antrim, in May 1729.
See also Roosevelt family - Wikipedia

Books:
1. The Wilderness Warrior: Theodore Roosevelt and the Crusade for America, by Douglas Brinkley

The Winning of the West, (4 Volsumes) by Theodore Roosevelt, 1889-1896
In it he attempted to connect the origin of a new "race" of Americans (i.e. what he considered the present population of the United States to be) to the frontier conditions their ancestors endured in throughout the 17th, 18th, and early 19th centuries.

"A Book-Lover's Holidays in the Open", Theodore Roosevelt, 1916

Links:
Google Search
Teddy Roosevelt at desertUSA.com

Teddy Roosevelt Show at blogspot.com