Trump tours Theodore Roosevelt library ahead of July 4 opening

President Donald Trump toured the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library in Medora, North Dakota, on July 1, stepping through a $450 million project built to open on America’s 250th birthday. Trump called Roosevelt “a great he-man” and compared his own style favorably with the Republican icon’s frontier reputation.

The library sits on 93 acres above the Little Missouri River and Theodore Roosevelt National Park, in a town with about 130 year-round residents. The 96,000-square-foot museum is privately run, outside the National Archives system, and centers on leadership, citizenship, and conservation. The public opening is set for July 4, and tickets for that day were sold out as the celebration was slated to run from July 2 through July 5, with free shuttles in Medora and a drone show called Eyes on the Stars: Theodore Roosevelt and the American West.

He flew in aboard a refurbished Boeing 747 that will serve as Air Force One, a plane gifted by Qatar to the United States, then rode in a ceremonial train labeled Freedom 250 and passed horseback riders dressed as Roosevelt’s Rough Riders.

Roosevelt came west to the Dakota Territory in the 1880s, and the Badlands helped shape the man he became after the deaths of his wife and mother in 1884. Campfire, an AI guide built with the Theodore Roosevelt Center at Dickinson State University and Microsoft’s AI for Good Lab, brings together Roosevelt letters, speeches and photographs from 18 institutions.

The project long stirred debate in North Dakota over whether it should be centered in Medora or Dickinson, and Native American critics have argued that celebratory treatments of Roosevelt have not fully addressed his racist rhetoric and views on Indigenous people. The library has worked with tribal leaders and plans to include Native American history in the museum.