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The Rough Rider at San Juan Hill
Included among the U.S. ground troops were the Theodore Roosevelt-led “Rough Riders,” a collection of Western cowboys and Eastern blue bloods officially known as the First U.S. Voluntary Cavalry. -
1st time named President
TR was named president for the first time after the assassination of Former President William McKinley. He remains the youngest person to become President of the United States. Roosevelt was a leader of the progressive movement and championed his "Square Deal" domestic policies, promising the average citizen fairness, breaking of trusts, regulation of railroads, and pure food and drugs. -
Coal Strike
The Coal strike was a strike by the United Mine Workers of America in the anthracite coalfields of eastern Pennsylvania. -
National Reclamation Act
The Act required that water users repay construction costs from which they received benefits. -
Elkins Act Passed
The Elkins Act specifically prohibited rebates and made the railroad corporation providing the rebate, as well as the shipper receiving it, liable under the law. -
Wins first full term
Roosevelt was elected to a full term in 1904 and continued to promote progressive policies. Incumbent Republican President Theodore Roosevelt defeated the Democratic nominee, Alton B. Parker. Roosevelt's victory made him the first president who ascended to the presidency upon the death of his predecessor to win a full term in his own right. -
Northern Securities Case
The Northern Securities Case (1904), which established President Theodore Roosevelt’s reputation as a “trust buster,” reached the Supreme Court in 1904. It was the first example of Roosevelt’s use of anti-trust legislation to dismantle a monopoly, in this case a holding company controlling the principal railroad lines from Chicago to the Pacific Northwest. -
Passage of the Pure Food and Drug Act
When Upton Sinclair's 1906 novel The Jungle revealed food adulteration and unsanitary practices in meat production, public outrage prompted Congress to establish federal responsibility for public health and welfare. -
Yosemite under Federal Control
He signed the American Antiquities Act of 1906 that transferred the Yosemite Valley and the Mariposa Grove back under federal protection and control. A decade later, when the National Park Service formed in 1916, Yosemite had its own agency to protect it, thanks to Roosevelt's efforts. -
Meat Inspection Act
The Meat Inspection Act prohibited the sale of adulterated or misbranded livestock and derived products as food and ensured sanitary slaughtering and processing of livestock. -
Leaves Presidency, Visits Africa
Landing in Mombasa in 1909, Roosevelt spent months in the wilds of East Africa, hunting big game in parts of what are now Kenya and Uganda. -
Running for Presidency in Bull-Moose Party
The Progressive Party (often referred to as the "Bull Moose Party") was a third party in the United States formed in 1912 by former president Theodore Roosevelt after he lost the presidential nomination of the Republican Party to his former protégé and conservative rival, incumbent president William Howard Taft.