The dry, sand-hued buttes rise from grassy canyons, and sagebrush dots the rugged North Dakota landscape. I am visiting the territory where “the romance” of Theodore Roosevelt’s life began. My renovated 1969 Shasta camper (with wings) navigates the winding roads of the national park named for the 26th U.S. president. It was Roosevelt’s escape to this wilderness in 1884, after the death of his first wife and mother on the same day, that transformed him. In fact, he famously said, “I would not have been President had it not been for my experience in North Dakota.”
Rainbow over the badlands. (Acroterion/CC BY-SA 4.0)
The Theodore Roosevelt National Park, which covers 70,446 acres, and its surrounding areas are where Roosevelt rode, hunted, and wrote. He built his Elkhorn Ranch, now a part of the national park, on a remote spot 35 miles north of the town of Medora where he learned cattle-ranching. He also rode horseback across the vast lands hunting elk, mule deer, white-tailed deer, bison, and more. This ranch life defined his experience in North Dakota….