Teddy Roosevelt's Bear Hunt

Marker shown with the sun setting in the western sky.

In November 1902, the American President Theodore ‘Teddy’ Roosevelt was relaxing during a trip to settle a border dispute in Mississippi and was taking part in a hunting trip in the state of Mississippi. Having had no luck in finding a bear, members of the presidential hunting party tracked and caught a small black bear which, as the story goes, was a motherless cub. They tied it to a tree and then “invited” the President to shoot it as a trophy of his visit. When the president arrived on the scene he refused to shoot the bear, considering it to be unsportsmanlike. The incident caused Clifford K. Berryman to draw a cartoon titled “Drawing The Line in Mississippi” which linked the incident to the political dispute that had taken President Roosevelt to Mississippi in the first place. (This is the redrawn image of Clifford K. Berryman's first image.)

Inside view of the Onward Store, celebrating the folklore of Pres. Theodore Roosevelt's hunting visit to Mississippi Delta in 1902 and the resulting notoriety it's brought this little community.

One of the historic pieces of transport from the turn-of-the-century era when Pres. Roosevelt visited the community. Food, clothing and hunting supplies for the president's visit would have been carried in such a wagon.

This 1967 portrait of Theodore Roosevelt by Adrian Lamb after Philip de Lászlo's 1908 original hangs in the National Portrait Gallery in Washington DC.

“No one ever craved the presidency more than Theodore Roosevelt or used its powers more joyously. In early 1901, however, his rise toward that office was suddenly checked. Having gained national prominence as a civil service reformer, Spanish-American War hero, and reform-minded governor of New York, he was now relegated to being William McKinley's vice president. But McKinley's assassination several months later changed everything, and Roosevelt was soon rushing headlong into one of American history's most productive presidencies. By the time he left office in 1909, his accomplishments ranged from implementing landmark efforts to conserve the nation's disappearing natural heritage, to instituting some of the first significant curbs on the excesses of big business, to building the Panama Canal.

When Hungarian-born English artist Philip de Lászlo painted the original version of this portrait, he encouraged Roosevelt to have visitors chat with him during the sittings, apparently thinking that it made for a more animated likeness.” — National Portrait Gallery