Theodore Roosevelt

Theodore Roosevelt became president at forty two in 1901, after William McKinley was assassinated, the youngest person ever to hold the office. A sickly, asthmatic boy, he remade himself into a rancher, a soldier and a writer, then used the presidency to take on the monopolies and to set aside forests and parks on a scale no president had tried. In 1906 he won the Nobel Peace Prize for helping end the Russo-Japanese War.

The teddy bear is named for him, after a 1902 hunting trip in Mississippi. In 1903 he camped in Yosemite with John Muir, a trip that helped the park's cause. On Mount Rushmore he stands between Jefferson and Lincoln, chosen by Gutzon Borglum to stand for the country's growth into a world power. In Washington, the wooded island in the Potomac named for him is a quiet memorial reached by a footbridge from the Virginia shore.