Theodore Roosevelt National Park

After driving for hours and hours across the flat plains and grazing fields of western North Dakota, I suddenly find myself in what can only be described as North Dakota’s version of the Badlands. Out of nowhere, I’m suddenly surrounded by amazing scenery, fantastic views, unusual formations, roaming bison, and numerous prairie dog towns.

This is Theodore Roosevelt National Park. The park is named for the president who spent many years living, ranching and hunting in its surrounding area. He was also known as a president who supported idea of the National Park system (even though the National Park Service did not yet exist). During his term in office, several new parks were created including some that I visited on this trip.

Roosevelt did not come to this area a happy man. On Valentine’s Day, 1884, both his mother and his wife died within hours of each other. Obviously distraught, Roosevelt left New York for this area of North Dakota where he built a cabin and spent much of the next three years. His time here may have cemented his love of the outdoors and influenced his future decisions as president towards Parklands.

The park itself consists of two separate units: a North and a South Unit, some 50 miles apart. The main Visitor Center for the park is located at the southern tip of the South unit in the town of Medora. We followed our typical protocol in the visitor center of: watching the park film, wandering through the exhibits, and checking out the gift store before heading up into the park. Shortly after entering the park, we stopped at a picnic area for a short lunch, then got back on the road.

Though there are some similarities to the Badlands in South Dakota, these hills and formations have a look all to their own. For the most part they are not as deep or as high as the ones in South Dakota, and most seem to have much more vegetation growing on and around them then we saw in Badlands.

Originally, I had hoped to take the Park Road which forms a large loop around the entire South Unit, but it turns out that the road is closed just over 3/4 of the way around, which would result in a lengthy backtrack. Instead, we drove about halfway then turned around to return to the park entrance.

Perhaps the highlight of this park was passing a bison who was simply walking along the side of the road by himself and oblivious to any traffic passing him. I was able to get a couple of nice photos out of the car window as I drove by. On our return trip, he had now moved onto the roadway itself taking up the lane we were in and forcing us into the oncoming lane (there was no traffic coming). We got even better close-ups as we passed the bison this time.

This park offers every bit the scenery of other parks, but it has far fewer visitors than the more famous parks. Though it’s sad that it may not get as much recognition, it’s equally nice to visit a park where there is not bumper to bumper traffic and large crowds at every stop. This was the first time my colleague had visited this park and he’s already planning a return visit to explore it further.

My original plan was to visit the North Unit on our way to our next site in northwestern North Dakota, but by the time we were leaving the South Unit we realized we would already be getting into our motel fairly late in the afternoon, so the North Unit will wait for another year.

Steve