Theodore Roosevelt Island

Theodore Roosevelt Island is a park and national memorial located on an island in the Potomac River within the District of Columbia. The site commemorates President Theodore Roosevelt and preserves a largely natural riverside landscape.

The island features a formal memorial plaza with a bronze statue of Roosevelt, surrounded by woodland trails, boardwalks, and tidal wetlands that support urban wildlife and birdwatching. Trails wind through mature trees and along streams, offering several short loop routes and interpretive signage.

The memorial elements were created to honor Roosevelt’s conservation legacy, while the island itself has been maintained to reflect native plant communities. The National Park Service administers the site and provides interpretive materials about Roosevelt and the island’s ecology.

The island sits in the Potomac River between the District of Columbia and Arlington, Virginia, and is reached by a footbridge from the Rosslyn neighborhood of Arlington. It is immediately adjacent to the George Washington Memorial Parkway corridor.

• Access: Access is by a pedestrian footbridge from the Rosslyn (Arlington) side of the Potomac River.
• Administration: Managed by the National Park Service as the Theodore Roosevelt Island National Memorial, combining a memorial site with largely natural landscapes inside Washington, D.C.

What to See #

• Memorial plaza: A stone memorial plaza centered on a seated bronze figure of Theodore Roosevelt, set among native plantings and interpretive panels.
• Woodland trails and wetlands: Wooded trails and wetlands across the island that preserve native plant communities and provide routes for walking and birdwatching.