Inspiring travel stories, tips, and guides from a couple exploring the world one destination at a time.
Medora sits in the far west of North Dakota, close enough to the Montana line that you can be there in fifteen minutes. Interstate 94 runs along the edge of the plains for hours and then, without much warning, drops into the valley of the Little Missouri River and the country falls apart into buttes and coulees. Medora is down in that hole. Fewer than 150 people live here year round, and the reason anyone comes is the national park on both sides of town.
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.
