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Theodore Roosevelt National Park
North Dakota badlands where a future president became a rancher
Theodore Roosevelt arrived in the Dakota Territory badlands in 1883 to hunt bison and stayed to ranch, returning after his mother and his wife died on the same day in February 1884. He later said he would never have become president without his experiences in North Dakota. The park that bears his name, the only national park named for a single person, protects about 110 square miles (285 km²) of eroded buttes, grassland and river bottoms along the Little Missouri River in three separate units, including the site of his Elkhorn Ranch.
President Harry Truman established Theodore Roosevelt National Memorial Park in 1947, and Congress made it a national park on November 10, 1978. The South Unit sits beside Interstate 94 at the town of Medora, while the quieter North Unit lies about 80 miles (130 km) north. Bison, reintroduced in 1956, graze among prairie dog towns, and a herd of feral horses roams the South Unit. The Maltese Cross Cabin, Roosevelt's first ranch house, stands near the Medora visitor center. Banded layers of clay, sandstone and lignite coal color the badlands walls.