Theodore Roosevelt library takes 'calculated risk' with remote North Dakota site

MEDORA, N.D. (AP) — The day his young wife and mother died, Theodore Roosevelt wrote in his diary that “the light has gone out of my life,” and it was only through extended trips to the isolated Dakota Territory in the 1880s that he regained “the romance" of living.

A library examining the country’s 26th president will open next summer in the North Dakota landscape remarkably similar to what Roosevelt would have experienced: far from any city and surrounded by rugged hills beneath a vast sky.

The isolation that was so appealing to Roosevelt remains today, and it raises a question.

How many people will visit a museum so distant from the rest of America?

“I think that’s a calculated risk that is being taken, and I actually think it’s a good one,” said Clay Jenkinson, a public humanities scholar and Roosevelt author who believes the area's beauty will help draw visitors.

The nearly 100,000-square-foot facility near Medora, North Dakota, is planned to open July 4, 2026, America's 250th anniversary. All living presidents have been invited.

Library Foundation CEO Ed O'Keefe said he wants the library to be where “kids drag their parents," a setting for picnics, weddings and even presidential debates.

Library boosters have a $450 million fundraising goal, with $344 million in cash and pledges so far, including from oil executive Harold Hamm and Walmart heir Rob Walton and his wife, Melani. Construction, design and related costs alone are pegged at $276 million. Other costs include millions for developing exhibits and digitizing archives.

The library rises from the flat, grassy top of a butte across a highway from Theodore Roosevelt National Park, which had more than 732,000 visits last year. A path leads onto the library's sloping roof planted with grasses and flowers. Inside, enormous rammed-earth walls of layered colors represent the dramatic Badlands.

“This is a purposeful place. We like to say that the library is the landscape,” O'Keefe said.

Roosevelt, a New York native, came to the Badlands to hunt bison in 1883. He invested in a ranching operation and returned multiple times over several years following the deaths of his wife and mother.

Stories of his adventures live on, from riding with cowboys to knocking out a bully in a bar and apprehending three boat thieves.

In an Independence Day speech in Dickinson, Roosevelt gave his famous “I like big things” oration, which more or less was the beginning of his speaking career, said William Hansard, public historian at Dickinson State University's Theodore Roosevelt Center.

“He goes on to talk about how all of the material prosperity that America has means nothing if it's not backed up by morals and virtues. ... All these big things in the world don't matter if Americans don't have good character to use them and to use them well and correctly,” Hansard said.

Roosevelt's time in Dakota largely ended after cattle losses in the terrible winter of 1886-87. He later said he never would have been president were it not for his time in North Dakota.

Roosevelt is a favorite president of people across the political spectrum, and his use of executive power — such as conserving public lands and building the Panama Canal — has shaped the modern presidency.

“Roosevelt will frequently do things that he believes are morally and legally right, and let Congress debate it later,” Hansard said. “He rules very, very much by executive order, and again, this is something that's been a huge debate over the past several presidencies on both sides of the aisle.”

The Roosevelt library might be the loneliest presidential center in the country. Medora has about 160 residents, and is hours away by car from North Dakota’s largest cities of Bismarck and Fargo.

The Obama Presidential Center is going up on Chicago's South Side. Florida Republican officials recently gifted nearly 3 acres of prime real estate in downtown Miami for President Donald Trump’s presidential library. Other presidential libraries include locations in Atlanta, Boston and Dallas.

Library boosters are hoping tourists visiting Mount Rushmore, Yellowstone and Theodore Roosevelt National Park will add the library to their itinerary.

But there's no question North Dakota's winters can be brutal with subzero temperatures and blizzards that close highways and make travel nearly impossible.

Still, Roosevelt admirers note that earlier attempts to create Roosevelt libraries in other places fell short, and it was in North Dakota where the idea really took root.

“We North Dakotans who justly feel that we created Theodore Roosevelt, that he became the Theodore Roosevelt of American greatness and memory during his time here in North Dakota, we feel that it would be very appropriate to have a presidential library in the heart of the Badlands,” Jenkinson said.

And beyond hardy winter travelers, O'Keefe said, library planners want to bring thousands of eighth graders from a five-state area to the library outside of summer, envisioning a “night at the museum” program.

“It's not going to be as busy as the summer, but that's the magic of it. You get a little more of the Badlands to yourself,” O'Keefe said.

O’Keefe said the facility will “humanize, not lionize” Theodore Roosevelt.

“We’re not going to shy away from the controversies and things that, perhaps if this library had been built 125 years ago, wouldn’t have been mentioned,” O'Keefe said.

It would be a travesty to portray Roosevelt only as a wholly good figure, said Jenkinson, who called him a man of his times, a bully, an imperialist and perhaps a warmonger.

He invited Black leader Booker T. Washington to dine at the White House. But he discharged “without honor” an entire regiment of 167 Black soldiers without due process, in connection with a shooting in a Texas town. Roosevelt encouraged photographer Edward S. Curtis in his photography of Native peoples, and some Native Americans were among Roosevelt's Rough Riders.

“But he also believed that Anglo-Saxon white America had a right and even a duty to dispossess Native peoples and install what he took to be a superior civilization. There was no ambiguity about that,” Jenkinson said.

Kermit Roosevelt said he hopes the library helps people understand the legacy of his great-great-grandfather.

“I really do think Theodore Roosevelt is important for us now because of his ability to appeal to people across the political spectrum and, in our polarized times, maybe bring people together and give them a sense of what it means to be American,” he said.

Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library Foundation CEO Ed O'Keefe, right, points to the distance atop the roof of the library Tuesday, Oct. 7, 2025, near Medora, N.D. Seen at left is Foundation Chief Communications Officer Matt Briney. (AP Photo/Jack Dura)

The view atop the roof of the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library shows the rugged Badlands landscape Tuesday, Oct. 7, 2025, near Medora, N.D. (AP Photo/Jack Dura)

The Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library is shown under construction Tuesday, Oct. 7, 2025, near Medora, N.D. (AP Photo/Jack Dura)

Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library Foundation CEO Ed O'Keefe gestures to a model of the library and surrounding landscape at the library's office in Medora, N.D., Tuesday, Oct. 7, 2025. (AP Photo/Jack Dura)

A statue of Theodore Roosevelt is seen Tuesday, Oct. 7, 2025, in Medora, N.D. (AP Photo/Jack Dura)

NEW YORK (AP) — Technology stocks are recovering some of their losses on Friday, and bitcoin has halted its plunge, as Wall Street bounces back from big losses taken earlier in the week, at least for now.

The S&P 500 rose 0.9% and was heading for just its second gain in the last eight days. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 610 points, or 1.2%, as of 9:35 a.m. Eastern time, and the Nasdaq composite was 0.7% higher.

Chip companies helped drive the gains, and Nvidia rose 2.9% to trim into its loss for the week, which came into the day at just over 10%. Broadcom climbed 3.4% to eat into its drop for the week of 6.3%.

They benefited from hopes for continued spending by companies on chips to drive their forays into artificial-intelligence technology. Amazon, for example, said late Thursday it expects to spend about $200 billion on investments this year to take advantage of “seminal opportunities like AI, chips, robotics, and low earth orbit satellites.”

Such heavy spending, similar to what Alphabet announced just a day earlier, is creating concerns of their own, though. The question is whether all those dollar will prove to be worth it through bigger profits in the future. With doubt remaining about that, Amazon’s stock tumbled 9.6%.

The tentative trading means the S&P 500 is still flirting with its worst weekly loss since November, and its third in the last four weeks. Besides worries about big spending on AI by Big Tech companies, whose stocks are the most influential on Wall Street, concerns about AI potentially stealing customers away from software companies also hurt the market through the week.

Bitcoin, meanwhile, steadied itself somewhat following a weekslong plunge that had sent it more than halfway below its record set in October. It climbed back above $68,000 after briefly dropping around $60,000 late Thursday.

Prices in the metals market also calmed a bit following their own wild swings. Gold rose 0.7% to $4,924.40 per ounce, while silver fell 3.2%.

Their prices suddenly ran out of momentum last week following jaw-dropping rallies, driven by the desire among investors to own something safe amid worries about political turmoil, a U.S. stock market that critics called expensive and huge debt loads for governments worldwide. By January, though, prices were surging so quickly that critics called it unsustainable.

On Wall Street, the recovery for bitcoin helped stocks of companies enmeshed in the crypto economy. Robinhood Markets jumped nearly 12% for the biggest gain in the S&P 500. Crypto trading platform Coinbase Global rose 6.6%. Strategy, the company that’s made a business of buying and holding bitcoin, soared 15.1%.

In stock markets abroad, indexes ticked higher in Europe.

That was even though Stellantis, the auto giant whose stock trades in Milan, lost roughly a quarter of its value after saying it would take a charge of 22 billion euros, or $26 billion, as it dials back its electric vehicle production. The automaker acknowledged “over-estimating the pace of the energy transition” and said it was resetting its business “to align the company with the real-world preferences of its customers.”

Stocks fell across much of Asia, but Japan’s Nikkei 225 rose 0.8%. It benefited from a 2% climb for Toyota Motor, which said CEO Koji Sato will step down in April and will be replaced by the company’s chief financial officer, Kenta Kon.

In the bond market, the yield on the 10-year Treasury edged down to 4.20% from 4.21% late Thursday.

AP Business Writers Chan Ho-him and Matt Ott contributed.

Traders Edward McCarthy, left, and Edward Curran work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, Thursday, Feb. 5, 2026. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)

Bob's Discount Furniture President & CEO Bill Barton rings a ceremonial bell on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange as his company's IPO begins trading, Thursday, Feb. 5, 2026. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)

Trader Robert FInnerty Jr. works on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, Thursday, Feb. 5, 2026. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)

Trader Michael Conlon, right, works on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, Thursday, Feb. 5, 2026. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)

Trader Jeffrey Vazquez works on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, Thursday, Feb. 5, 2026. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)

Currency traders watch monitors near a screen showing the Korea Composite Stock Price Index (KOSPI), left, at the foreign exchange dealing room of the Hana Bank headquarters in Seoul, South Korea, Friday, Feb. 6, 2026. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)

Currency traders work near a screen showing the Korea Composite Stock Price Index (KOSPI), top center, and the foreign exchange rate between U.S. dollar and South Korean won, top left, at the foreign exchange dealing room of the Hana Bank headquarters in Seoul, South Korea, Friday, Feb. 6, 2026. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)

Currency traders watch monitors near a screen showing the Korea Composite Stock Price Index (KOSPI), top center, and the foreign exchange rate between U.S. dollar and South Korean won, top center left, at the foreign exchange dealing room of the Hana Bank headquarters in Seoul, South Korea, Friday, Feb. 6, 2026. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)