The Gold Coast Field Guide
A Visitor's Guide to
Sagamore Hill.
Theodore Roosevelt's home is one of the most remarkable historic sites in the country. Here's everything you need to know before you go — and the one detail nobody tells you about the tickets.
Sagamore Hill is a 1.5-mile drive from our brewery, and we send people there constantly — visitors looking for a Long Island day, history buffs in town for the weekend, parents trying to fill a Saturday with their kids. Almost everyone comes back impressed. Almost everyone also wishes they'd known a few things before they showed up.
This is the post we wish someone had handed us the first time we went. What it is, why it matters, how to actually get a tour ticket, and how to make a real day out of it.
What It Is
The Summer White House.
Sagamore Hill was Theodore Roosevelt's home from 1885 until his death in 1919. During his presidency from 1901 to 1909, this was where he lived during the warm months — and because TR didn't slow down for anyone, it became the working seat of the American government every summer. The press called it the Summer White House and the name stuck.
He received foreign dignitaries on the porch. He negotiated the treaty that ended the Russo-Japanese War under this roof, the work that won him the Nobel Peace Prize in 1906. He wrote 18 books in the library on the first floor. He raised six children here, kept a menagerie of pets that included a badger and a one-legged rooster, and held the kind of family life that became part of American mythology.
The house is preserved exactly as it was when he lived in it. Not restored. Not reimagined. Preserved. The trophies on the walls are the trophies he hung. The books on the shelves are the books he read.
The Tickets
Read this before you go.
The single most important thing to know about Sagamore Hill: the house tour tickets sell out almost instantly. Every Tripadvisor review mentions it. People drive in from out of state, get to the parking lot, and find out they can't get in.
⚠ The Catch
Tours are Friday – Sunday only. Tickets are released at 9:30 AM on the day of the tour, online only, through recreation.gov. They sell out within minutes. There is no advance booking.
Here's how to actually get one:
1. Set an alarm for 9:25 AM on the day you want to go. Have recreation.gov/ticket/facility/251573 already loaded on your phone or laptop.
2. At 9:30 AM sharp, refresh. Pick the latest tour time available (the 1, 2, or 3 PM slots fill last). Click through fast — payment first, questions later.
3. Have a backup plan if you don't get tickets. (We have one. See below.)
Pro tip: tours are limited to 11 people per group and last about an hour. They're worth every bit of the effort to score one.
The Tour
What you'll actually see.
The tour is led by a National Park Service ranger and walks you through nearly the whole 23-room home — far more access than most presidential historic sites give you. You'll see:
The North Room. TR's grand reception hall, where he received heads of state, generals, and royalty. Built in 1905 specifically because the original house was getting too small for presidential business.
The Library. Where he wrote 18 of his 35 books. Big fireplaces, deep chairs, and a south-facing bay window built to his exact specifications.
The Gun Room. On the top floor. TR was an avid hunter and the room reflects it — though he was also one of the foremost conservationists in American history, and that contradiction is part of the man.
The bedrooms, the children's rooms, the kitchen. All preserved with original furnishings. You're walking through a family's life, not a museum recreation.
The tour is about an hour. It involves stairs and narrow hallways — the home was built in 1884 and it shows. There's a ramp on the porch for first-floor wheelchair access, but the upper floors are stairs only.
If You Couldn't Get Tickets
The grounds are still magnificent.
This is the part most visitors don't know. Even without a house tour, Sagamore Hill is worth the trip. The grounds are free to enter, open every day from sunrise to sunset, and cover 83 acres of forest, meadows, salt marsh, and bay beach.
A short walk takes you to the Old Orchard Museum (about a quarter mile from the parking lot), which tells the story of the Roosevelt family across generations and has its own bookstore. There are nature trails, picnic areas, and an unobstructed view of Oyster Bay harbor that hasn't really changed since TR was watching it.
The Visitor Center is open Thursday afternoons (1–4:30 PM) and Friday through Sunday (12–4:30 PM) and worth a stop for context, even if you've already missed the house tour.
If you only have an hour and no tickets: walk the grounds, do the Old Orchard Museum, then go to lunch. That's a complete visit.
Practical Stuff
The details that matter.
Address & Contact
20 Sagamore Hill Road, Oyster Bay, NY 11771
(516) 922-4788 · staffed Wed–Sun, 9 AM – 5 PM
Website: nps.gov/sahi
Tour tickets: recreation.gov
Fees
Grounds: FREE
House Tour: $15 adults · $7.50 seniors · $1 children
Parking: free (RVs and motorcycles okay)
When to Go
House tours: Friday – Sunday only
Grounds: every day, sunrise to sunset
Visitor Center: Thu 1–4:30 PM, Fri–Sun 12–4:30 PM
Best time of year: spring (the grounds bloom) and fall (the light on the bay is unreal). Summer is busiest. Winter is quiet but the house is still beautifully preserved.
Make a Day of It
What to do before and after.
Sagamore Hill takes 2 to 3 hours if you do the tour and walk the grounds — less if you're just doing the grounds. Either way, you'll have time for the rest of Oyster Bay before or after.
Before: Coffee at Southdown Coffee on Audrey Avenue. Browse Theodore's Books down the block — owned by former Congressman Steve Israel and named for the man whose house you're about to tour. Grab a TR biography for the grounds if you want.
Right next door: The Theodore Roosevelt Sanctuary and Audubon Center is the oldest songbird sanctuary in the country, established in 1923 in TR's honor. Twelve acres of trails, live raptors on display, and TR's actual gravesite a short walk away. Often quieter than Sagamore Hill itself, and free.
After: Audrey Avenue is your move. Lunch at any of the spots downtown, then walk to the brewery. We're 1.5 miles from Sagamore Hill, two blocks from the harbor, and we've seen every kind of TR fan walk through the door over the years. Some of them are very serious about Theodore Roosevelt. We respect that.
For the full Oyster Bay day plan, see our Perfect Day in Oyster Bay guide.
After the Tour
Lunch is on us.
(Well, not literally.)
We're 1.5 miles from Sagamore Hill at 36 Audrey Avenue. Open seven days. Cold beer, real food, a proper place to sit down after a couple hours on TR's hilltop.
Plan Your Visit →36 Audrey Avenue · Oyster Bay, NY · Open till midnight Fri & Sat
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