On June 9th Steven and I started our 2.5-month-long road trip of a huge swath of the country - almost due north first, then heading east through the Midwest states, the Northeast states, and some of the Eastern states to finally reach the Southern states of Alabama and Florida for a month on the beach! It's sure not the most direct route, of course, but it will mean Steven gets to see North Dakota, his 49th state, and we will continue our tour of even more state capitals and capitols en route. After leaving the Gulf Coast of Florida, we plan to be home in Denver at the end of August via a detour to see our daughter and her family in Chicago!
As a child growing up in Canada's capital city of Ottawa, my parents took my four brothers and me on a summer road trip to Western Canada one summer. It was on that trip that we dipped down to North Dakota to visit Theodore Roosevelt National Park before heading north again to the province of Alberta and then the grueling 2,800 miles back East to Ottawa on the Trans Canada Highway. I intentionally chose the word 'grueling' because the Trans Canada was only a two-lane road for almost the entire part at least until 1981 when Steven and I drove it from Edmonton, Alberta, to Ottawa. Steven was definitely not impressed as he was accustomed to the vast interstate system of multi-lane highways! All that to say, Steven really wanted to visit his last contiguous state, North Dakota, en route to the beach.
The day before we'd driven (I say 'we' loosely as Steven does all the driving on our road trips while I navigate and knit!) well over 500 miles from Denver to the small town of Bowman, ND, where we stayed for the night. It was located about 75 miles due south of the national park. Heading out of Bowman, the spinning helicopter caught my eye and I told Steven to hit the brakes so I could take some photos. Luckily, he's become quite accustomed to such requests when something decidedly quirky or interesting catches my fancy!
If you're an American reading this, you're probably aware that North Dakota has been long rumored to have underground nuclear missile silos in case of an attack from Russia although I'd say they would have been built in the era of the USSR. That was my explanation, anyway, for the missile launcher on the truck in the field just outside of town!
Roosevelt National Park was divided into three distinct units with the South and North being the more accessible ones, complete with visitors centers, trails, campgrounds, and all the other facilities people want. Elkhorn, the other unit, was Roosevelt's former ranch and had extremely limited tourist infrastructure and was normally only accessible by 4-wheel drive vehicles. The three units were connected by the Little Missouri River. We only had time to see the South Unit as the North Unit was a further 80 miles north.
For your smile of the day, click on this Wildlife Petting Chart to make it bigger. We smiled when we saw it at the Painted Canyon Visitor Center as, believe me, neither of us wanted to get that close to the park's bison!
Years ago, Steven and I had driven through the 'Badlands' in South Dakota but we hadn't realized they also existed in their northern neighbor, too. The term came from being notoriously difficult to travel across the fractured landscape. We could just imagine how infinitely harder it would have been in Roosevelt's era to explore this unforgiving terrain.
After seeing these photos, I was really looking forward to laying eyes on the cannonball concretions and hoodoos in the park until I realized both were only located in the park's North Unit. Sadly, we just didn't have the time to drive an additional 175 miles round trip to see either even on a trip lasting 2.5 months as our itinerary called for us to be in the state capital of Bismarck that night.
Hoodoos, by the way, are also known as rain pillars and form beneath protective caprocks. After learning that the national park was home to the country's third largest concentrations of petrified wood, I sure hoped we'd notice some on our exploration of the South Unit.
Roosevelt described the park's unusual formations as "... so fantastically broken in form and so bizarre in color as to seem hardly properly to belong to this earth."
Roosevelt was known as "Our Conservation President." Hunting and ranching in the Little Missouri Badlands hugely impacted his desire to protect natural resources. When he became president, Roosevelt designated 230 million acres of national parks, forests, monuments, and wildlife reserves. His conservation legacy was memorialized in Theodore Roosevelt National Park.
Roosevelt in the Badlands in 1884:
Roosevelt came to this area of the Dakota Territory in 1883 to hunt before returning to his native New York. He said the Badlands' "grim beauty" lured him back to this wild and untamed land as a rancher and later as a leader. Roosevelt found spiritual and physical renewal in the Badlands as he learned about the wilderness. When he championed conservation years later as President, it was because he had been able to draw upon his experiences in the state.
I learned that the origin of the Teddy Bear story is shrouded in some mystery. This book, with its political overtones, was published in 1907 and was one of many that linked Roosevelt with the "Teddy Bear."
After just one hunting trip to the Badlands, Roosevelt was hooked and subsequently invested in the flourishing cattle industry, returning often to the Dakota Territory over the next few years. He so enjoyed "the glory of work and the joy of living" on the ranch that he later claimed "I never would have been President if it had not been for my experiences in North Dakota."
We stopped at the Skyline Vista overlook after beginning the Scenic Loop Drive.
Though these landforms looked mountainous, I learned that they were in fact called buttes as mountains only form when land is thrust upward and that didn't occur in the Badlands. Buttes formed when erosion moved the surrounding material. Rainwater, creeks, and the river also contributed to the constant erosion which left behind these fantastic butte shapes.
The cottonwoods in the distance hid our view of the Little Missouri River at the base of the buttes.
A sign at the overlook referred to the "ever present prairie breeze" there - ha ha - it wasn't a 'breeze' when we were there as the winds were so fierce that we had trouble standing upright while walking to the overlook!
On my frequent walks near our home, I come across many, many prairie dog colonies but nothing of the magnitude of this and other Prairie Dog Towns while driving along the park's scenic drive. I had sure never given much credit to black-tailed prairie dogs before as I was certainly unaware they were one of nature's most impressive animal architects! Did you know these workers build 'towns' perfectly suited for their social way of life?
Beginning in the 1880s, this river bottom was a cattle-corralling area which resulted in the vegetation being thinned out after decades of heavy trampling. That enabled prairie dogs to establish a colony that was about 220 acres in size in the early 1940s.
Though there weren't masses of bison, we were still happy we saw some on the rugged landscape.
At the Wind Canyon Lookout, we learned that water had carved most formations in the park but at Wind Canyon wind was the primary erosive agent as the canyon faced into the prevailing wind which resulted in the soft sediments exposed on the canyon walls to be very susceptible to erosion.
Steven and I didn't recall visiting a national park before that was in two different time zones - the South Unit was in Mountain but the North Unit was in Central!
The trail stretched out along the edge of a high bluff that overlooked the Little Missouri River. From halfway along the trail, we caught sight of the river for the first time although the river may look like a road in my photos! We had to wonder if the river would have any water in it at the end of a hot, dry summer.
Yup, we sure did climb to the very top of the butte for the following views of the river!
The Canyon definitely did live up to its name as it was very windy!
The first wildflowers we spotted in the park were at Windy Canyon.
Not sure if you can spot the wispy smoke we saw coming from the burning coal vein next to the scenic drive but it was a little eerie.
A little further on was the Boicourt Overlook and the Boicourt Trail. From the former vantage point, the Little Missouri Badlands seemed to go on forever but the national park only protected a small part of the vast landscape.
The buttes on the horizon were far outside the park's boundary. If you look closely, you can pick out Square Butte located over 15 miles away.
Sentinel Butte was also just viewable over 21 miles away.
The aptly named Camel's Butte could just be made out over 18 miles away.
As this part of the park was reputed to have some of the best views of the Badlands, we thought we might be able to spot herds of bison or bands of wild horses. If we'd been here much earlier or later in the day, that would have been the time to gaze at elk traveling between feeding and sleeping locations.
This was definitely the first time we'd been told NOT to report smoke if we saw or smelled it! The reason was a nearby coal vein had ignited during a prescribed fire in 2018 and it still continued to burn underground.
Just seconds before I took this shot, Steven had to hold onto his hat with both hands as the winds got so fierce. The prospect of hiking the narrow trail was neither fun nor particular safe because of the winds so we returned to the car, saddened we hadn't got the chance to see more than a few bison or bands of wild horses.
How amazing nature is that this lone wildflower managed to survive under such harsh conditions at Boicourt.
Normally the scenic drive was a loop but the road a few miles ahead of Boicourt was closed so we began the same drive back toward the entrance. On the way we were treated to this sight of a mama bison and her calf just a few feet from our car! No, we didn't see the cannonball concretions, hoodoos, or petrified wood in the South Unit as we'd hoped but the close-up views of the bison almost made up for that!
Within spitting distance of the park entrance was the town of Medora. It was there we saw Roosevelt's Maltese Cross Cabin that had been relocated from a few miles away. It had been a temporary home for Roosevelt during his mid-20s when he divided his time in New York City and his two ranches in the Dakota Territory.
Near the end of his initial two-week trip in September of 1883 to hunt bison in Little Missouri in the Dakota Territory, Roosevelt invested $14,000 in the Maltese Cross Ranch. That winter, the cabin was built to Roosevelt's specifications. After losing both his wife and mother on February 14th, 1884, when he was just 25, Roosevelt returned to the Territory that June to focus on ranching and mend his broken heart. It was then he established his Elkhorn Ranch 35 miles north of Medora. After the harsh winter of 1886-87 caused Roosevelt to lose sixty percent of his cattle, he began to sell off interests in his ranches and turned his attention to politics. Roosevelt still maintained his Elkhorn Ranch, however, until 1898. Although Roosevelt had lost a huge amount of money in his ranching business, Roosevelt wrote of his time in the Territory, "It was here the romance of my life began."
Roosevelt's cabin was dismantled and shipped to be exhibited at the St. Louis World's Fair in 1904 and at the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition in Portland, Oregon the following year. After Theodore National Memorial Park was established in 1947, the National Park Service placed the cabin on its current foundation in 1960 and restored the roof to its original appearance.
The letters and books Roosevelt wrote about his experiences in the Badlands revealed the role the area played in shaping his character and his passion for protecting wild places.
We read that Roosevelt was known to get so excited when discussing politics he would actually rock himself around a room!
A few minutes' walk from the cabin were a chimney and the remnants of a meat-packing plant to ship beef in refrigerated railcars. The business venture was profitable until the extreme winter of 1886-87 devastated area cattle herds and helped put the plant out of business. Other factors contributing to the plant's demise were the lower quality of range-fed beef, consumer preference for corn-fed beef, and strong competition from competitors Armour and Swift, two big names in the meat business still today in the US!
Also visible near the chimney were the remains of a railroad loading dock that was connected to the slaughterhouse and the railroad spur.
We wandered around the small town of Medora for only a few minutes as it was too blasted hot with the temperature in the 90s and far too windy to want to do anything but get an ice cream cone!
Medora Town Hall was built in 1924 to be the town's activity center. It featured electric lights, a hot water heating system, a furnished balcony, and a projection booth so silent movies could be shown every other week. The movie company provided a five-piece orchestra so people of all ages could dance following the movie.
Boxing was a popular event in the early years of the town hall!
After Roosevelt left North Dakota, he led the legendary Rough Riders in 1898 up San Juan Hill in the Spanish-American War and became vice-president in 1901. Months later, he became the 26th president when William McKinley was assassinated. A formal gathering welcomed the President back to Medora in 1903.
Even though we didn't spot any cannonball concretions, hoodoos, or petrified wood in the park's South Unit, we still counted our time in the national park a great success. I was happy to explore a good chunk of the park again after so many decades and especially to do it with Steven on his first foray into North Dakota. We probably learned more than we ever wanted about Teddy Roosevelt, too!
Next post: The Enchanted Highway en route to Bismarck that afternoon!
Posted on June 17th, 2021, from Chicago, Illinois, where we came to spend a few days with our almost one-year-old granddaughter, Clara, and, oh yes, her parents, too!
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