Bison roam the grassy plains.
Prairie dogs squeak from mounds leading to their underground dens.
Wild horses road the land.
When the sun goes down, the layers of sedimentary rock come alive in the softer light. Stand atop a mountain during the golden hour and the park takes on a whole new hue.
In 1884, Roosevelt himself retreated to this wide-open country after his wife, Alice Lee, and his mother, Mittie, died only hours apart. “The Bad Lands” he wrote of the area, “grade all the way from those that are almost rolling in character to those that are so fantastically broken in form and so bizarre in color as to seem hardly properly to belong to this earth.”
In later years, he credited this landscape as having soothed him after his personal tragedies and set him back on course. “I have always said I would not have been President had it not been for my experience in North Dakota,” he once noted.
The North Dakota Badlands have been cut over eons by the muddy Little Missouri River as it flows north, and the national park comprises three separate units totaling more than 70,447 acres.
The South Unit lies along Interstate 94, adjacent to the tiny gateway town of Medora, and serves as the main recreational focus for most visitors, with its scenic drive.
The North Unit lies 70 miles away and while it has services such as a visitor center and a road through the badlands, it receives far fewer visitors.
The Elkhorn Ranch Unit, the homesite of Teddy's Roosevelt 1880s cattle ranch, lies in between.
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