On 18 February 1961, Theodore Roosevelt departed Mare Island, California, bound for the East Coast of the United States.

After successfully firing her first Polaris A1 missile on 20 March 1961 and completing her shakedown training, she arrived in Groton, Connecticut, on 1 May for post-shakedown repairs at the Electric Boat Company shipyard.

At the end of the training period, she returned to Charleston to load missiles and to prepare for another series of deterrent patrols out of Holy Loch.

After drydocking for temporary correction of the damage, she departed Holy Loch on 5 April 1968 to return to the United States for permanent repairs.

She visited Norfolk, Virginia, Puerto Rico, and St. Croix in the United States Virgin Islands before concluding the cruise at Charleston on 27 November 1968.

In June, she conducted a one-week United States Naval Academy midshipman familiarization cruise out of New London, then underwent nuclear propulsion safety training before deperming[clarification needed] at Norfolk.

In mid-June, she received word of her reassignment to the United States Pacific Fleet with her new home port to be Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.

She departed Charleston on 20 September 1974, transited the Panama Canal on 5 October, and, after a nine-day stop for missile load-out at Strategic Weapons Facility, Pacific in Bangor, Washington, continued on to Pearl Harbor, where she arrived on 4 November 1974.

She entered port at Guam on 24 November, underwent refit at her new advanced base there, and began her first deterrent patrol in the Pacific Ocean on 31 December 1974.

From November 1978 until October 1979, Theodore Roosevelt served as a "target of opportunity" for various ASW forces including ships, aircraft and submarines.

On 14 November, the ship left Esquimalt and arrived at Carr Inlet, Washington for acoustic testing while suspended on cables.

On 19 November, she transited to Bangor, Washington, and submitted the first official work request (2-Kilo) to the newly established Trident Refit Facility.

[citation needed] Theodore Roosevelt commenced the Deactivation Availability process on 3 January 1980 at Submarine Base Bangor.

In mid-year she was moved to Puget Sound Naval Shipyard (PSNS) for drydocking alongside Abraham Lincoln, where the reactor fuel was removed and the missile compartment dismantled to comply with SALT requirements.

An environmental impact study was approved in 1984 for the disposal of de-fueled submarine reactor compartments via permanent storage at the federal government reservation at Hanford, Washington.

The remaining hull of Theodore Roosevelt was drydocked for the final time at PSNS in 1993, to enter the Nuclear Power Ship and Submarine Recycling Program.