"Theodore Roosevelt Roughrider" portrays North Dakota's most famous adopted son as colonel of the regiment he commanded in the Spanish-American War. The sculptor, Alexander Phimister Proctor, was born in Canada and raised in Colorado. Alexander Proctor was a contemporary of Frederic Remington and Charles Russell. He dedicated his life to creating monumental statues throughout the United States. His other equestrian works include statues of General William T. Sherman in New York's Central Park and General Robert E. Lee in Dallas plus Denver's infamous "Bronco Buster." Proctor's original tribute to Roosevelt is erected in Portland Oregon and was the subject of the Metropolitan Museum of Art's first educational film on the work of a sculptor.
Alexander Proctor had met Theodore Roosevelt at the 1893 World's Fair. Roosevelt commissoned Proctor to make several sculputors for the White House during his presidency. According to the Inventory of American Sculpture (IAS), the Mandan sculpture is a smaller version of the one commissioned by Dr. Henry Waldo Coe for the City of Portland.
Proctor was quoted as saying of his intention in making the statue: "I wanted to give the world... the impression of Roosevelt as I knew him --- as, indeed, I always think of him. I most admired his fearlessness, his courage, and the energy always waiting to spring into action. I never thought of him as a man of hasty, ill-considered action. All his exuberance, all his restlessness, was only the surface that covered a quiet dignity and reserve. The popular idea of him is that he never was in repose. I wanted to show him as he appeared to me, with all his magnificent energy held in check."
Coe met Theodore Roosevelt while living in Dakota Territory, and the two formed a long-lasting friendship. Dr. Coe had moved to Mandan in 1880 after graduating from medical college in New York and was one of the first physicians to settle in North Dakota. He was elected to the last territorial legislature in 1885 and served as Mandan's mayor before relocating to Portland in 1891. While he commissioned the original statue for Portland, he later presented this smaller version to the City of Mandan.
The statue was designed with the approval of the Roosevelt family. Edith and Kermit Roosevelt found the uniform "Teddy" wore at San Juan Hill rummaging through family trunks. They furnished it to Proctor to use in casting the statue.
The statue was cast in 1922 at the Roman Bronze Foundry in New York and dedicated September 11, 1924. It is bronze 56" x 56" x 20" in size with a stone base 57" x 72" x 56". A full-scale replica of the original statute was cast in 1923 in bronze on California light grey Raymond granite pedestal by the Henry Bonnard Foundry, New York and is on display in Minot. The 12' cast from the original statue is in the State Historical Society of ND archives.
During his lifetime, Dr. Coe refused requests for the statue to be copied and for Philadelphia's Fairmont Park and New York's Central Park.
