THEODORE ROOSEVELT NATIONAL PARK

For us, it was one of those serendipitous finds. Having a serious problem with the RV in Calgary and unable to find a Canadian repair shop that could handle it, we ended up in Minot, North Dakota. In making our way back to the lower states from Minot, we discovered  the Theodore Roosevelt National Park. People tend to drive past this park as they go on to Mount Rushmore or Glacier, but that’s a mistake. Historically and geologically, it’s an interesting place. Oddly shaped buttes, layered by millennia of deposition and compression, rise rather suddenly out of the grassy plains of the Badlands. This is not the breathtaking scenery of Glacier or Yosemite, but the gentler beauty of the Old West. Jackrabbits, vast towns of prairie dogs, and other Plains animals dwell among the sagebrush and cottonwoods.

When young Teddy Roosevelt—already an accomplished writer and legislator—stepped off the train from the East in 1883, he was ill prepared for hunting bison and for the Badlands. Imagine how the local cowboys must have reacted to the nearsighted, scrawny dude whose sterling silver hunting knife had been crafted by Tiffany! With his characteristic enthusiasm, T.R. immediately responded to the West, bought land, and went into the cattle business. A partner managed the ranch when Roosevelt went back to the East.

Only five months later, tragedy struck. Roosevelt’s beloved wife and his mother died on the same day, leaving him with a newborn daughter (who would grow up to be the uncontrollable Alice Roosevelt). Wretched, he returned to the West for the solace that environment provided. In 1884 he bought a second ranch, the Elkhorn. That ranch home is long gone now, but a model of it has been constructed from descriptions.

A model of the Elkhorn ranch house at the visitor's center. This child had grown tired of sightseeing!

T.R. sold it in 1890, after failing spectacularly as a cattle rancher. In Hunting Trips of a Ranchman, one of his numerous books, T.R. vividly described the Elkhorn ranch and its surroundings: "My home ranch-house stands on the river brink. From the low, long veranda, shaded by leafy cotton-woods, one looks across sand bars and shallows to a strip of meadowland, behind which rises a line of sheer cliffs and grassy plateaus. This veranda is a pleasant place in the summer evenings when a cool breeze stirs along the river and blows in the faces of the tired men, who loll back in their rocking-chairs (what true American does not enjoy a rocking-chair?), book in hand--though they do not often read the books, but rock gently to and fro, gazing sleepily out at the weird-looking buttes opposite, until their sharp outlines grow indistinct and purple in the after-glow of the sunset."

In contrast to T.R.’s rough cabin (which is near the visitor's center) at his first ranch, there is a luxurious home near by, the Chateau de Morès. This was owned by T.R.’s neighbors, the Marquis and Marquise de Morès. Luckily for modern tourists, the Chateau has been preserved as a historical site. Its elegant furniture and plumbing, modern for its time, made it stand out in the rough frontier era.

De Morès was almost as fascinating a character as T.R. himself, though an unsavory one in many ways. He was a renowned duelist, a cattle rancher in the Old West, and a railroad pioneer in Vietnam. Unfortunately, he was also an extreme anti-Semite. Famous also as a Dakota Territory gunslinger, he was arrested (but never convicted) for murder several times.

The Marquis built a meat-packing plant and tried to ship refrigerated meat to Chicago via the railroad, in order to avoid the cost of sending cattle to the Chicago stockyards, but the beef trust in Chicago squelched his efforts. Like T.R., he eventually gave up on cattle ranching and left the West. In later years the Marquis became very involved in anti-Jewish politics and was ambushed and killed in Africa, apparently by the French government. No one was ever arrested for his murder.

Theodore Roosevelt National Park is only one of the nation’s hundreds of national parks. 2016 is the 100th anniversary of the National Park System; though this may lead to some unwelcome campground crowding and stress on the parks' environments, it also is certainly a cause for great celebration. Everyone should visit some national park this year, and stopping at one of the less familiar parks, such as this one, may make it possible when Yosemite and Yellowstone are crammed full of tents and RVs.