North Dakota

After leaving Glendive, Montana and the Mikoshika State Park, we headed up I-94 to Medora located in the North Dakota Badlands. This little town of 100 to 150 is mostly the caretakers for The Theodore Roosevelt National Park and the Marquis de Mores 26 room Chateau that we spent several days visiting. Roosevelt’s ranch was part of the national park. The park drive is 36-mile of beautiful grassy hills where you will find bison grazing like the days of old.

There is quite a bit of history to Medora. I am quoting from an article I read: “In 1883, two 25-year-old adventurers, the Marquis de Mores and Theodore Roosevelt, converged in the empty cattle land where Medora now sits. The Northern Pacific railroad had just been built through western Dakota when the handsome French marquis arrived. He had married a wealthy American named Medora and when he saw that stark landscape, he formed a plan. Instead of moving steers to Chicago, he would use his wife's wealth to build a packing plant here. He would ship butchered beef in the new refrigerated railroad cars.

That same year, a sickly, bookish, young Teddy Roosevelt showed up. He was a son of privilege, out from New York to shoot himself a buffalo. The terrible hardships of the place and the harsh beauty of the scabrous land captivated him. He bought 450 head of cattle and went into business himself.”

We learned neither of their business ventures was successful, the marquis’s meat packing business failed within six years and Roosevelt’s ranching enterprise soon ceased as a terrible winter killed many on his herd and his ranch foreman quit to return to the east coast.

Roosevelt went on to form the Rough Riders and create the National Forest System. He also won the Nobel Peace Prize. Marquis de Mores returned to France and was murdered by Tuareg tribesmen in North Africa

We realize our travels are but extensions of history lessons and this certainly falls into that category. As we roam through this part of the country, I see imaginary buffalo herds grazing on tall grass as far as the eye can see. At one time, there were 40-60 million bison roaming the land.

This is the home of General George Custer when he was stationed at Fort Abraham Lincoln. In 1876, the Army departed from here as part of the Great Sioux War of 1876-77, resulting in Lieutenant Colonel George A. Custer's defeat at the Battle of the Little Bighorn, where they were to push the non-treaty Indians back to their particular reservations. Custer along with about half of his troops did not return to Fort Lincoln. The Fort was abandoned in 1891 after the completion of the railroad to Montana in 1883. A year after the fort was abandoned; local residents disassembled the fort for its nails and wood. In 1895, a new Fort Lincoln was built across the river near Bismarck.

Born: 5 December 1839; Birthplace: New Rumley, Ohio; Died: 25 June 1876 (killed in battle); Best Known As: The man in command at Custer's Last Stand.

George Armstrong Custer was on the losing end of a famous clash between native Americans and the U.S. Army at the Battle of Little Bighorn in 1876. Custer graduated at the bottom of his class at West Point military academy, but saw extensive action as a Union cavalry officer in the Civil War and reached the wartime rank of major general. After the war he was made lieutenant-colonel of the Seventh Cavalry on America's western frontier. At Little Bighorn, his troops faced combined bands of Lakota Sioux, Cheyenne, and Arapaho indians led by the chief Sitting Bull.

General Custer's closet as seen on our tour of his home in North Dakota.

Sitting Bull, c.1831–1890, Native American chief, Sioux leader in the battle of the Little Bighorn. He rose to prominence in the Sioux warfare against the whites and the resistance of the Native Americans under his command to forced settlement on a reservation led to a punitive expedition. In the course of the resistance occurred the Native American victory on the Little Bighorn, where George Armstrong Custer and his men were defeated and killed on June 25, 1876.

We went to see his burial site at Mobridge, South Dakota which was nearer to his birthplace.