Theodore Roosevelt National Park
— the country that made the president.
Not only on a wall.
“The badlands country along the Little Missouri River in western North Dakota, where Theodore Roosevelt came in 1883 to hunt bison and ended up running cattle. The park holds three units across about 70,446 acres of striped buttes, cottonwood bottoms, and shortgrass prairie. Bison move in small herds across the flats; the river runs slow and brown between the cliffs.
Theodore Roosevelt National Park, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
The park lies in Billings, McKenzie, and Slope counties of western North Dakota, between the towns of Medora and Watford City. Three separate units — South, North, and the Elkhorn Ranch site — total about 70,446 acres along the Little Missouri River. Congress established the park in 1978; the area had been a national memorial park since 1947. The badlands here are a layered record of Paleocene sediments, coal seams, and bentonite clay, cut by the river into buttes, draws, and grass-topped tables that rise about 180 metres above the valley floor.
The air above the badlands is high-plains air at roughly 750 metres, dry and almost always moving. The South Unit sits in the rain shadow of the Rockies and averages around 380 millimetres of precipitation a year. In summer the heat lifts off the bentonite flats in visible waves; in winter the cold comes down from Saskatchewan and the buttes go white above the dark river. Bison and a feral herd of wild horses keep their own paths through the wind; the Maah Daah Hey Trail runs 144 miles between the South and North Units along the ridges.
The park has two main entrances. The South Unit is reached from Medora off Interstate 94, with a 36-mile scenic loop drive open in season. The North Unit lies about 70 miles north on US-85 near Watford City, with a 14-mile drive that ends at Oxbow Overlook. The Elkhorn Ranch Unit, where Roosevelt's second cabin stood, is reached only by gravel road. Entry is fifteen dollars per vehicle for seven days, or covered by the federal annual pass. The visitor centre in Medora keeps Roosevelt's original Maltese Cross cabin out back.