Vice President Theodore Roosevelt was atop a mountain when he heard the news: an assassin’s bullet would likely take President McKinley’s life, and make Roosevelt president.

Upon his inauguration shortly thereafter, Roosevelt brought his lifelong love of the natural world to the White House. With a stroke of his executive pen, he set aside vast swaths of land as preserves and monuments. And later, with an election looming, he embarked on the most comprehensive tour of America’s natural wonders any president had ever made, visiting the Grand Canyon, Yellowstone, and taking “the most important camping trip in history” with John Muir in Yosemite.

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