Theodore Roosevelt National Park South Unit

Theodore Roosevelt first came to the Dakota badlands in 1883 as a young Easterner drawn west to hunt bison, and he was quickly captivated by the country. He invested in cattle ranching and established the Maltese Cross and later the Elkhorn ranches along the Little Missouri River. When his wife and his mother died on the same day in early 1884, a grieving Roosevelt returned to the badlands, and the strenuous ranch life became his refuge.

The years he spent riding, ranching, and hunting in this broken country left a deep mark. He watched the great bison herds vanish and saw the northern plains overgrazed and changed, and the experience helped forge his lifelong commitment to conservation. As president he would protect an extraordinary amount of American land as national forests, parks, monuments, and wildlife refuges. He later said he would not have become president without his time in North Dakota, and the park bears his name in tribute.

The badlands are the work of water and time. Over millions of years, rivers and streams laid down layers of sand, silt, clay, and volcanic ash, along with beds of lignite coal, across an ancient floodplain. The Little Missouri River and its runoff then cut down through those soft layers, carving the maze of buttes, gullies, and pinnacles that gives the badlands their name.

The banded colors in the hillsides record that layered history, and the reddish streaks come from beds where lignite coal caught fire and baked the surrounding clay into a hard brick-red rock called clinker, or scoria. Petrified wood, the stone remains of ancient forests, turns up in the badlands as well. The landscape is still eroding and changing, a place where the deep past is written plainly in the ground.

The park is one of the best places in the state to see wildlife roaming free. Herds of bison graze the grasslands and often wander along the loop road, a living reminder of the great herds Roosevelt watched disappear. Prairie dog towns dot the flats, their sentries barking and diving into burrows, and they in turn draw hawks, badgers, and other predators.

The South Unit is also famous for its free-roaming wild horses, descendants of ranch stock that now range the badlands in small bands, a sight found in few other national parks. Elk, mule deer, pronghorn, and a wealth of birds fill out the picture, and the golden light of early morning or evening is the best time to see them. Always keep a respectful distance, for these are wild animals.

Just outside the park entrance sits Medora, a small frontier town founded in 1883 by a French nobleman, the Marquis de Mores, who named it for his wife and dreamed of building a meatpacking empire on the plains. The venture failed, but the town endured, and today its historic streets, shops, and the summer Medora Musical make it the lively gateway to the badlands.

This country has been home to Northern Plains peoples for a very long time, including the Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara, now the MHA Nation, whose ties reach across the wider region. For travelers, Medora and the South Unit make a natural pairing, a place to walk historic streets and then drive out into a wild landscape that helped shape an American president and the conservation movement itself.

The closest Boutel™ stays, so you can turn this stop into an overnight. Each is an independently owned, editorially selected place to stay.