Teddy Roosevelt's Dakota Ranch

Theodore Roosevelt arrived in the Dakota Territory in September 1883 as a young, sickly New York politician looking to hunt bison. He stayed and became a rancher. When his wife and mother died on the same day in February 1884, he retreated to his North Dakota ranch for extended periods, later writing that the time there fundamentally changed him physically and spiritually. He arrived as a slender, bookish man with glasses and a squeaky voice. He left as the vigorous, outdoorsy figure who would become president in 1901. Roosevelt later said that it was the West that made him who he was.

Source: Wikipedia