The log cabin seems modest by modern standards. Stout when built in 1883, it looks smallish now, especially when one imagines it against the vast and rugged backdrop of the North Dakota Badlands.

The cabin was home to Theodore Roosevelt during a critical time in the life of Long Island’s only U.S. president. Then 24, Roosevelt first came to those badlands to hunt bison but returned in the summer of 1884 a broken man seeking refuge a few months after the deaths of his wife, Alice, and mother, Mittie, on the same awful February day.

Enamored of the ranchers he had met and their vigorous life outdoors, Roosevelt bought his own ranch and threw himself into that lifestyle — one that bore no resemblance to the comfort memorialized in his Sagamore Hill home in Cove Neck near Oyster Bay. When yo

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