Prairie Dogs

Last Updated: June 22, 2026

Theodore Roosevelt first came to the North Dakota Badlands in 1883 as a young man, drawn by the promise of bison hunting and the wide open West. What he found instead — or perhaps in addition — was a landscape that would shape him profoundly. After losing both his mother and his wife on the same day in 1884, he returned to these rugged badlands to grieve and heal. The land, he later wrote, made him the man he became. It’s impossible to stand in this park and not feel some of that pull yourself.