Episode #47: Roosevelt’s Unfinished Map
Sep 15, 2026 · 11 min · 6 segments
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit…
Sep 15, 2026 · 11 min · 6 segments
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit…
In May 1917, the National Dunes Park Association staged an enormous pageant on Waverly Beach.
A thousand performers, tens of thousands of spectators, as unabashed propaganda for a proposed sand dunes national park.
It was 11 years too late for the western half of the shoreline.
By the summer of 1906, teams of horses and mules were grading the dunes flat.
The Grand Calumet River was rerouted, the wetlands were drained, and the town was named for the company's chairman, Elbert Gary.
In duel for the dunes, Kay Franklin and Norma Schaefer put it plainly, in erecting Gary Works, U.S. Steel destroyed the Lake County dunes forever.
All of that happened while Roosevelt was in the White House, protecting land 2,000 miles west.
The problem was more than inattention.
At the height of the panic of 1907, Elbert Gary and Henry Clay Frick came to the White House to ask whether the government would object U.S. Steel absorbed the Tennessee Coal, Iron, and Railroad Company, its largest southern competitor.
Taft's Justice Department sued over that transaction in 1911, and in 1920, the Supreme Court declined to break the company up.
Holding that size alone is no offense.
U.S. Steel became the largest American corporation to survive the trust-busting era intact.
The man who broke Morgan's Railroad Trust let his steel trust stand after it leveled the dunes.
That record is worth holding alongside Roosevelt's own definition of the word from the new nationalism in 1910.
Quote, conservation does not mean non-use or non-development.
It does not mean tying up the natural resources of the states.
It means the utilization of those resources under such regulation and controls as will prevent waste, extravagance, and monopoly, but at the same time, not merely promoting, but encouraging such use and development as will serve the interests of the people generally, end quote.
That is not a philosophy of locking places away.
In May 1917, the National Dunes Park Association staged an enormous pageant on Waverly Beach.
A thousand performers, tens of thousands of spectators, as unabashed propaganda for a proposed sand dunes national park.
It was 11 years too late for the western half of the shoreline.
By the summer of 1906, teams of horses and mules were grading the dunes flat.
The Grand Calumet River was rerouted, the wetlands were drained, and the town was named for the company's chairman, Elbert Gary.
In duel for the dunes, Kay Franklin and Norma Schaefer put it plainly, in erecting Gary Works, U.S. Steel destroyed the Lake County dunes forever.
All of that happened while Roosevelt was in the White House, protecting land 2,000 miles west.
The problem was more than inattention.
At the height of the panic of 1907, Elbert Gary and Henry Clay Frick came to the White House to ask whether the government would object U.S. Steel absorbed the Tennessee Coal, Iron, and Railroad Company, its largest southern competitor.
Taft's Justice Department sued over that transaction in 1911, and in 1920, the Supreme Court declined to break the company up.
Holding that size alone is no offense.
U.S. Steel became the largest American corporation to survive the trust-busting era intact.
The man who broke Morgan's Railroad Trust let his steel trust stand after it leveled the dunes.
That record is worth holding alongside Roosevelt's own definition of the word from the new nationalism in 1910.
Quote, conservation does not mean non-use or non-development.
It does not mean tying up the natural resources of the states.
It means the utilization of those resources under such regulation and controls as will prevent waste, extravagance, and monopoly, but at the same time, not merely promoting, but encouraging such use and development as will serve the interests of the people generally, end quote.
That is not a philosophy of locking places away.
The rest of this transcript — segmented and speaker-labeled, so you land on the exact moment something was said
Search every transcript — by keyword, by phrase, or by meaning, across every show Radar indexes
Trends — what is surging across podcasts, measured against its own baseline
Alerts — when a name you follow appears in a newly indexed episode
No account is needed to search Radar.