Item of the Week
From the East Hampton Library
Long Island Collection
On Sept. 6, 1898, Col. Theodore Roosevelt paid a visit to the Montauk Lighthouse, signing a guestbook owned by Capt. J.G. Scott, the Lighthouse keeper. This guestbook recorded the signatures of those who visited the Lighthouse between 1897 and 1908, and it documents only a fraction of those who did so during Captain Scott’s 25-year service as keeper.
Colonel (not yet President) Roosevelt landed in Montauk on Aug. 15, 1898, along with the rest of the 1st U.S. Volunteer Cavalry, known as the Rough Riders, to quarantine at Camp Wikoff. The camp had been established earlier that month to keep soldiers returning from the Spanish-American War from spreading tropical diseases.
The United States entered the war in April of 1898, after the explosion of the U.S.S. Maine in Havana Harbor, Cuba. The war was fought in the Caribbean and Pacific Islands, making it the first this country participated in that was not fought on American soil. American soldiers stationed in Cuba, including Roosevelt and the Rough Riders, were exposed to, contracted, or died from diseases such as malaria, yellow fever, typhoid, and dysentery.
These deaths led Russell Alger, the secretary of war, to select Montauk as a site for a quarantine camp large enough to accommodate more than 20,000 returning soldiers. At the time, Montauk was a remote and isolated area accessible only via railroad or boat. A lease with the Long Island Railroad Company gave the government access to the land, rail lines, and docks.
Camp Wikoff and its relevance to the Spanish-American War put Montauk on the map, as newspapers across New York wrote about Roosevelt’s visit. His position as assistant secretary of the Navy before the war and his election as New York governor after his service ensured that his whereabouts were documented by the media.
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Megan Bardis is a librarian and archivist in the East Hampton Library’s Long Island Collection.
