Courtesy Library of Congress
President Theodore Roosevelt posed in his tent at a Rough Riders reunion in San Antonio for this 1905 photograph. This was the last of Roosevelt’s three trips to San Antonio. About 50 veterans of the unit, formally known as the 1st U.S. Volunteer Cavalry, attended the reunion. Roosevelt made a speech at the Alamo and participated in a parade. Roosevelt made his first visit to San Antonio in 1892 to go on a hunting excursion, which he detailed in his memoir The Wilderness Hunter. After two days fruitlessly searching for game on a ranch in Frio, a passing cowboy mentioned that the area around the Nueces River was overrun by javelinas. Roosevelt headed over (it took him six hours) and managed to bag a pair of them. The mounted head of at least one still hangs in his home at Sagamore Hill on Long Island. His second visit to San Antonio, in 1898, is the most famous. It was during that visit that Col. Leonard Wood and Roosevelt set up recruiting station on the patio of the Menger Hotel for the Rough Riders.
