diff --git a/r/.Rbuildignore b/r/.Rbuildignore
index f5eeba4117454..7ec279d8862b2 100644
--- a/r/.Rbuildignore
+++ b/r/.Rbuildignore
@@ -30,3 +30,4 @@ STYLE.md
 ^vignettes$
 ^PACKAGING\.md$
 ^inst/__pycache__$
+^bootstrap.R$
diff --git a/r/DESCRIPTION b/r/DESCRIPTION
index c6726523e68e9..81b5d79258255 100644
--- a/r/DESCRIPTION
+++ b/r/DESCRIPTION
@@ -45,6 +45,7 @@ Imports:
 Roxygen: list(markdown = TRUE, r6 = FALSE, load = "source")
 RoxygenNote: 7.2.3
 Config/testthat/edition: 3
+Config/build/bootstrap: TRUE
 Suggests:
     blob,
     curl,
diff --git a/r/Makefile b/r/Makefile
index 514f5adf4e144..c3267e8cfe45b 100644
--- a/r/Makefile
+++ b/r/Makefile
@@ -67,5 +67,5 @@ clean:
 	-rm src/Makevars.win
 	-rm -rf arrow.Rcheck/
 	-rm -rf libarrow/
-	-rm -rf tools/cpp/ tools/.env tools/NOTICE.txt tools/LICENSE.txt tools/checksums
+	-rm -rf tools/cpp/ tools/dotenv tools/NOTICE.txt tools/LICENSE.txt tools/checksums
 	-find . -name "*.orig" -delete
diff --git a/r/bootstrap.R b/r/bootstrap.R
new file mode 100644
index 0000000000000..a0c90b03e2c7f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/r/bootstrap.R
@@ -0,0 +1,78 @@
+# Licensed to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) under one
+# or more contributor license agreements.  See the NOTICE file
+# distributed with this work for additional information
+# regarding copyright ownership.  The ASF licenses this file
+# to you under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the
+# "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance
+# with the License.  You may obtain a copy of the License at
+#
+#   http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
+#
+# Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing,
+# software distributed under the License is distributed on an
+# "AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY
+# KIND, either express or implied.  See the License for the
+# specific language governing permissions and limitations
+# under the License.
+
+
+
+# exclude_patterns are regular expressions so use ^ to match top-level
+# directories only. Otherwise 'dir' will match 'src/dir' and 'dir/file'.
+rsync <- function(src_dir, dest_dir, exclude_patterns) {
+  all_files <- list.files(src_dir, recursive = TRUE)
+
+  # Filter out excluded patterns
+  for (pattern in exclude_patterns) {
+    all_files <- all_files[!grepl(pattern, all_files)]
+  }
+
+  files_to_vendor_src <- file.path(src_dir, all_files)
+  files_to_vendor_dst <- file.path(dest_dir, all_files)
+
+  # Recreate the directory structure
+  dst_dirs <- unique(dirname(files_to_vendor_dst))
+  for (dst_dir in dst_dirs) {
+    if (!dir.exists(dst_dir)) {
+      dir.create(dst_dir, recursive = TRUE)
+    }
+  }
+
+  # Copy the files
+  if (all(file.copy(files_to_vendor_src, files_to_vendor_dst, overwrite = TRUE))) {
+    cat("All files successfully copied to tools/cpp\n")
+  } else {
+    stop("Failed to vendor all files")
+  }
+}
+
+
+if (dir.exists("../cpp")) {
+  unlink("tools/cpp", recursive = TRUE)
+  rsync("../cpp",
+    "tools/cpp",
+    exclude_patterns = c(
+      "^apidoc",
+      "^build/",
+      "^build-support/boost-",
+      "^examples",
+      "^submodules",
+      "^src/gandiva",
+      "^src/jni",
+      "^src/skyhook",
+      "_test\\.cc"
+    )
+  )
+
+  # The thirdparty cmake expects .env, NOTICE.txt, and LICENSE.txt to be available one
+  # level up from cpp/ we must rename .env to dotenv and then replace references to it
+  # in cpp/CMakeLists.txt, because R CMD will produce a Note otherwise.
+  file.copy(from = c("../NOTICE.txt", to = "../LICENSE.txt"), "tools/", overwrite = TRUE)
+  file.copy("../.env", "tools/dotenv", overwrite = TRUE)
+
+  cmake_lists <- readLines("tools/cpp/CMakeLists.txt")
+  cmake_lists <- gsub("\\.env", "dotenv", cmake_lists)
+  writeLines(cmake_lists, "tools/cpp/CMakeLists.txt")
+} else {
+  cli::cli_alert_warning("Arrow C++ sources not found, skipping bootstrap.")
+}