Medora

Medora was founded in 1883 beside the newly built Northern Pacific Railway by a French nobleman, the Marquis de Morès, who named it after his wife, Medora von Hoffman. His plan was to slaughter cattle on the open range and ship refrigerated meat to Chicago by rail. He built a meat-packing plant and a house, the Chateau de Mores, now a museum.

The same year a young Theodore Roosevelt came to the badlands to hunt bison. He bought into the Maltese Cross Ranch seven miles south of the town, and in 1884, after his mother and wife died on the same day, started a second ranch, the Elkhorn, 35 miles to the north. The starvation winter of 1886–87 killed much of his herd and he left ranching, but his years in the badlands shaped the conservation policies of his presidency. In April 1903 he returned as president on a whistle-stop tour, and, most of the badlands' residents turned out to greet him; the local hotel renamed itself after his Rough Riders that year.

In the 20th century Medora became a tourist town. Roosevelt's land became a national park, the Medora Musical opened in 1965, and in 1986 the Schafer family gave its share in the town to the new Theodore Roosevelt Medora Foundation. A wildfire in April 2021 forced an evacuation but spared the town, and the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library opened in the hills to the west on 4 July 2026.

The town's culture is the Old West as a show, and Roosevelt is at the centre of it. Its main event is the Medora Musical, a revue staged each summer at the open-air Burning Hills Amphitheater since 1965, which looks back at the Wild West days of the region and at Roosevelt's time there. The Theodore Roosevelt Medora Foundation maintains the amphitheatre and historic properties in the town.

Ranching remains the working culture around the town. The North Dakota Cowboy Hall of Fame, established in 1995, honours the state's Western way of life through Native American history, rodeo and ranching, and much of the surrounding grassland is leased by cattle ranchers for grazing. The Mandan phrase that gives the Maah Daah Hey Trail its name means "an area that has been or will be around for a long time".

The opening of the presidential library in July 2026, on the country's 250th anniversary, has given the town a second focus as a place of history and scholarship, alongside the national park and its wildlife.

Medora is the seat of Billings County. It had 121 residents at the 2020 census, and the most recent count cited for it gives 160 in 2024. It is the only incorporated place in Billings County, and most of the land around it is national park or the Little Missouri National Grassland, the largest grassland in the United States.

Life follows the seasons. Summer is the busy season, when the town is one of the most popular tourist attractions in the state and the Musical plays to large audiences; in winter it is very quiet. The surrounding economy is ranching, with oil and gas exploration across the wider region, which the grassland's managers note can harm its soils, water and wildlife. Dickinson, about 36 miles east, is the nearest larger town for shopping and services. Housing is scarce in so small a place, and homes are not cheap: the average price of a house in Medora was about $315,000 in mid-2025, according to the property site Zillow. Even the historic hotel in the centre is operated by the town's foundation.

Medora's food is ranch-country food, and beef is the centre of most menus. The town itself began as a beef business: the Marquis de Morès built his packing plant to send refrigerated meat east by rail, and cattle ranching still surrounds the town, much of it on grassland leased for grazing. Among its places to eat is the Pitchfork Steak Fondue, which shares the Medora Musical's address on Chateau Road. Most of the town's trade comes in summer, when it is a popular tourist destination.

German heritage runs through North Dakota cooking, and kuchen, a pie-like pastry with a thick crust and a sweet custard or fruit filling, brought in the late 19th century by settlers who were German by ethnicity and Russian by residency, is a regional favourite, and many German restaurants in the Dakotas list it among their desserts. In town, a few restaurants and cafés occupy the Western buildings of the centre; outside the season, choices are few and Dickinson has more.