47 Fun Facts About Theodore Roosevelt National Park

Theodore Roosevelt National Park is in the badlands of which U.S. state?

North Dakota. Roosevelt was no tourist in these badlands: in the 1880s he ran two cattle ranches here, in what was then Dakota Territory.

Which sportsmen's club did Theodore Roosevelt help found in 1887, after watching the badlands' big game vanish?

Boone and Crockett Club. Roosevelt had come west to shoot big game before it disappeared; his club made 'fair chase' its code and pressed Congress to protect Yellowstone.

Travelers on Interstate 94 get their first look into Theodore Roosevelt National Park from which rest-area overlook?

Painted Canyon. It is named for the bands of colour in its rock layers, and its visitor center doubles as a highway rest area: the only glimpse of the park many drivers ever get.

Which river flows through all three units of Theodore Roosevelt National Park?

Little Missouri. The river did more than pass through: it carved these badlands, cutting faster and deeper after Ice Age glaciers blocked its old northward course to Hudson Bay.

Theodore Roosevelt first came to the badlands in September 1883 to hunt which animal?

Roosevelt came to shoot a bison and got one after days of hunting; smitten with the 'perfect freedom' of the West, he bought into a cattle ranch before going home.

What double loss on Valentine's Day 1884 sent Theodore Roosevelt back to his badlands ranch?

His wife and mother died hours apart: Mittie of typhoid fever, then Alice, two days after giving birth. Roosevelt drew a large X in his diary and wrote, 'The light has gone out of my life.'

Roosevelt's first ranch, seven miles south of Medora, was known by what name?

Maltese Cross. Ranches went by their cattle brands, and this one's was an eight-pointed Maltese cross; on paper it was the Chimney Butte Ranch, but locals knew it by the brand.

Roosevelt's second, more remote ranch, 35 miles north of Medora, was called what?

Elkhorn. Roosevelt called it his home ranch, but once he gave it up the buildings were stripped, and by 1901 nothing was left of the house except its foundation stones.

Roosevelt hired two woodsmen from which state to run his second ranch?

Maine. Bill Sewall and Wilmot Dow had guided Roosevelt's hunting trips there; more at home riding logs than horses, they spent their first badlands winter building his ranch house from cottonwood.

After thieves stole his boat in spring 1886, what did rancher Theodore Roosevelt do?

Chased and arrested them himself. Roosevelt and two ranch hands built a boat and followed the thieves down the icy river for days; he had packed Tolstoy's Anna Karenina to read on the way to the jail in Dickinson.

What killed about 60 percent of Theodore Roosevelt's badlands cattle in the late 1880s?

A brutal winter. Snow and cold in 1886-87 killed cattle by the hundred thousand across the West, and Roosevelt began selling off his herds and never ranched in earnest again.

Which of these books grew out of Theodore Roosevelt's own years as a badlands rancher?

The Wilderness Hunter, one of his three books on ranch and hunting life. Roosevelt did some of his writing at a small desk in his badlands ranch house, and the park still keeps it.

Roosevelt sold his last badlands cattle in 1898, the year he helped lead which cavalry regiment to Cuba?

The Rough Riders. Cowboys, prospectors and hunters filled its ranks beside college men, and Roosevelt quit his desk as Assistant Secretary of the Navy to go to war with them.

Where has Roosevelt's first ranch cabin been displayed since 1959?

At the South Unit Visitor Center, since 1959. Before that the cabin went on tour: the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair, Portland's 1905 exposition, then a place on the state capitol grounds.

Roosevelt's first cabin was unusual for the northern plains for its steeply pitched roof, which created what?

An upstairs sleeping loft. The ranch hands slept up there while Roosevelt kept a bedroom of his own below, one of three rooms in a cabin bigger than most frontier homes.

Which piece of furniture did Roosevelt call something no 'true American' could fail to enjoy?

A rocking chair. The aside comes from his account of summer evenings on the ranch veranda, where tired men sat book in hand but mostly just rocked and gazed out at the buttes.

Which president signed the postwar act creating Theodore Roosevelt National Memorial Park, the only park ever given that title?

Harry Truman, on April 25, 1947. A year earlier he had vetoed the first park bill, advised that these badlands lacked the outstanding scenery a national park demands.

When Theodore Roosevelt National Memorial Park became a full national park in 1978, over a third of it was protected as what?

Designated wilderness. President Carter signed the law in November 1978, and it set aside 29,920 acres where no road or building may ever be built.

Just before Congress made it a park in 1947, the Roosevelt badlands briefly held which status?

A national wildlife refuge, from November 1946. The badlands had been judged below national park standard and handed to the Fish and Wildlife Service; the following April a compromise law made them a park after all.

The South Unit of Theodore Roosevelt National Park holds one of the largest U.S. concentrations of what?

Petrified wood. By the park's reckoning only Petrified Forest National Park and Yellowstone hold more; the stumps are sequoias and other giant trees buried soon after the dinosaurs died out.

Which cattle breed does Theodore Roosevelt National Park keep in its North Unit to recall the 1880s trail drives?

Longhorn. Drovers once pushed herds from as far as Texas through what is now the North Unit on the Long X Trail, so since 1967 the park has kept a few longhorn steers on show there.

Which trail links the North and South units of Theodore Roosevelt National Park across the grassland between them?

Maah Daah Hey. The trail runs 144 miles, but mountain bikers must leave it and detour around the park, where bicycles are banned from every trail.

The trail linking Theodore Roosevelt National Park's units is named in the language of which people, Lewis and Clark's 1804 winter hosts?

Mandan. The phrase is said to mean an area that has been, or will be, around for a long time; the turtle on the trail's marker posts, though, is a symbol borrowed from the Lakota.

Where have most of the surplus bison rounded up in Theodore Roosevelt National Park been sent?

Native American tribes. The fenced range can feed only so many animals, so every few years the park rounds up its herds and trucks the surplus to tribal lands, where they build up the tribes' own herds.

Which free-roaming animals, recognised as 'historical setting' in 1970, descend from bands that eluded a 1954 round-up?

Wild horses. For years the Park Service tried to clear every horse out of the park; today the herd is kept as a living reminder of the open-range ranching Roosevelt knew.

Which overlook marks the end of the North Unit's scenic drive in Theodore Roosevelt National Park?

Oxbow Overlook, where the 14-mile drive ends. The name fits: an oxbow is a looping U-shaped meander, and the free-flowing river below keeps shifting its course with every flood cycle.

Which burrowing rodent is Theodore Roosevelt National Park's keystone species, mixing soils and feeding predators?

Prairie dog. Their constant clipping keeps a dog town's plants fresh and more nutritious, which is why pronghorn and other big grazers come there to feed.

Which apex predator is missing from the badlands of Theodore Roosevelt National Park today?

Wolves. With wolves and brown bears gone, nothing preys on the park's big grazers, so rangers must round up and thin the herds themselves to keep the range from being eaten bare.

Which law-enforcement post did Theodore Roosevelt hold in Billings County during his ranching years?

Deputy sheriff. Roosevelt threw himself into badlands public life: he also helped organise the local stockmen's association so that ranchers could tackle overgrazing and other shared problems together.

Which French nobleman founded Medora in 1883 and named it after his wife?

The Marquis de Morès named the town for his wife, Medora von Hoffman, a New York banker's daughter whose family money paid for his ventures; their 26-room summer house is now a museum.

What business did Medora's French founder build there to bypass the Chicago stockyards?

Medora's founder built a meat-packing plant to slaughter cattle on the range and ship refrigerated beef east by rail; the scheme soon failed.

Medora's French founder once sent Roosevelt a letter the future president read as what?

A challenge to a duel. Roosevelt replied that he was 'most emphatically' not the Frenchman's enemy but stood ready to answer for his actions, and nothing more came of the matter.

Which show plays nightly each summer at the Burning Hills Amphitheatre just outside Theodore Roosevelt National Park?

The Medora Musical. It dates from 1965, when Harold Schafer, the businessman behind Mr. Bubble bubble bath, bought the hillside amphitheatre while restoring the old cattle town.

Which federal programme's camps built roads in both future park units from 1934 to 1941?

Civilian Conservation Corps. Three companies of about 200 men each arrived in 1934 and lived in tents until barracks went up; their hand-cut sandstone shelter at River Bend Overlook still stands.

Which of these birds lives in Theodore Roosevelt National Park all year instead of just passing through?

Wild turkey. Turkeys do not migrate, so they tough out the badlands winter beside the golden eagles, while sandhill cranes only pass through in huge flocks each spring and fall.

Which industry on the land around Roosevelt's remote home-ranch site threatens its quiet with noise and truck traffic?

Oil drilling. Roosevelt chose the spot for its solitude, and the worry now is the sight and sound of oil facilities and their truck traffic on the land next door.

Which evergreen of the badlands slopes gives its name to the North Unit's only campground in Theodore Roosevelt National Park?

Juniper. The campground's two picnic shelters are older than the park itself: New Deal work crews built them in the 1930s, a decade before there was a park to camp in.

Which reintroduced animal lives only in Theodore Roosevelt National Park's North Unit, where the badlands are steep enough for it?

Bighorn sheep. Hunting and livestock disease wiped out the badlands' own bighorns by the early 1900s; the herd on the North Unit's cliffs today grew from releases that began in 1956.

What everyday difference separates the North and South units of Theodore Roosevelt National Park?

They are in different time zones. The North Unit keeps Central time and the South Unit Mountain time, so a visitor driving from one to the other gains or loses an hour.

What baked the red rock, locally called scoria, that caps many buttes in Theodore Roosevelt National Park's lignite-streaked badlands?

Burning coal seams. Lightning or a prairie fire can set a lignite bed alight for years, baking the clay above it into a natural brick that geologists call clinker; it is not volcanic at all.

What did Theodore Roosevelt turn down when he handed two ranchmen a $14,000 cheque for his first ranch in 1883?

A receipt. When they first met, the same two men had refused to lend this stranger a horse for fear he would ride off with it; now, as one recalled, the only security for his money was their honesty.

A gun-waving bully in a saloon near the badlands mocked Theodore Roosevelt with which nickname before Roosevelt floored him?

Four Eyes. Roosevelt, who had boxed at Harvard, answered the taunt about his glasses with three quick punches and took the man's guns; the bully left town on a freight train the next morning.

Which New Deal label did the Roosevelt badlands carry from 1935, a dozen years before becoming a park?

Recreation Demonstration Area. The government bought up drought-ruined homesteads here and put relief crews to work building roads and picnic grounds, meaning to hand the result to the state.

The North Unit of Theodore Roosevelt National Park lies just south of which town?

Watford City, about 15 miles north of the entrance. The Bakken oil boom swelled it from 1,744 people at the 2010 census to 6,207 in 2020.

Fossils show that the badlands of Theodore Roosevelt National Park were what kind of place soon after the dinosaurs died out?

A warm, swampy lowland. The star fossil is Champsosaurus, a ten-foot crocodile-like fish hunter on show in the park's museum, from a time when the climate here resembled Florida's.

Which animal, hunted out of the badlands by the late 1800s, did Theodore Roosevelt National Park bring back in 1985?

Elk. With plenty of forage and no natural predators the new herd grew so fast that the park has since had to remove animals to protect the range.

Why has Theodore Roosevelt National Park begun bringing in bison from other federal herds?

To widen the gene pool. Thousands of bison have left the park since 1956, but its herds grew from just 29 founders, and small closed herds run a growing risk of inbreeding.