Trevize1138
07-21-2003, 03:49 PM
From a friend who knows how much I love the MDH trail and the park. I didn't realize the Elkhorn Ranch was Teddy's old ranch. So, no wonder we had a hard time biking on the trail near that! I wouldn't put it past Teddy to haunt that place and add a couple pounds to your pack just to remind you who's boss. That, and the descendants of his livestock continue to clop up the trail and make it hard-as-hell to ride.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/travel/chi-0307200322jul20,1,4382469.story?col
OUR NATIONAL PARKS
Bully for the badlands
Looking for adventure? It could surprise you in the North Dakota where T.R.
once roamed
July 20, 2003
By Robert Cross
Tribune staff reporter
Published July 20, 2003
THEODORE ROOSEVELT NATIONAL PARK, N.D.--One morning, a herd of bison--40
strong--clattered down the scenic drive that winds through the North Unit.
They forced my car off the road and into a ditch.
During the previous few days that I had spent at the South Unit, I saw only
one buffalo up close. Now I had seen more than enough.
But I get to look back on the episode as a hairy badlands adventure--the
kind of thing Theodore Roosevelt probably would have embellished even
further in one of his frontier journals.
The three units of Theodore Roosevelt National Park--one unit is the site of
Roosevelt's main ranch--offer more theatrics than a newcomer might expect.
It hardly ranks with headliners like Yellowstone and Yosemite. Yet a sense
of wonder comes through: Colorful badlands streaked with bands of pink,
blue, gray and yellow appear abruptly in a context of velvety green
grass--miles of grass, knee-high and lush. Animals--not only bison but feral
horses, elk, mule deer, white-tailed deer and even a few North Unit longhorn
cattle and bighorn sheep--all roam freely in a landscape of prairie and
oddly shaped rock formations.
The brute scenery got that way as the Rocky Mountains were growing up 60
million years ago. Ancient streams carried residues of volcanic ash and
eroded materials far out into what became known as the Great Plains.
The most dramatic badlands in what is now North Dakota occurred about 20 to
30 miles east of the Montana line. The North and South Units of the park
stand 50 miles apart, with the Roosevelt ranch site somewhat in between.
Those park units protect a portion of North Dakota so it looks the way the
eventual 26th president might have seen it when he first arrived in 1883,
six years before the Dakota Territory became two states.
Roosevelt came West looking for adventure and "the strenuous life." He
sought big game, hoping to bag the largest land mammal in North America. But
he discovered that the bison population had been all but wiped out by all
the hunters who preceded him. It took Roosevelt 13 days to hunt down and
kill his first bison, and soon after he began to understand that the
wilderness already suffered from irresponsible hunting, ranching, farming
and mining. Still, he developed an interest in the cattle business and
became a partner in the purchase of the Maltese Cross Ranch, about 7 miles
south of what later was established as the South Unit of the park.
In 1884, Roosevelt returned to North Dakota, mourning both his first wife
and his mother, who had died on the same day that year, Feb. 14. He threw
himself into cattle ranching and the outdoor life, keeping his partnership
in the Maltese Cross and starting a ranch all his own, the Elkhorn.
His cabin from the Maltese Cross Ranch once had been exhibited on the
Capitol grounds in Bismarck, and other places, but it's been given a
permanent home behind the South Unit visitor center.
That was where the future president lived during his early years out West.
Later, he built a place of his own, but it has not been so well preserved.
Those who venture out to the remote Elkhorn Ranch site find fragments of
building foundations and a couple hundred acres of raw North Dakota
landscape. Even so, National Park Service officials consider the Elkhorn
Ranch site an essential part of Theodore Roosevelt National Park.
"It's not so important in the sense that they can see something," explained
Bruce Kaye, the park's chief interpreter. "There's the grove of trees, the
actual site where Theodore Roosevelt put his second home, the principal home
as he called it, his home in the badlands.
"You can see a couple of the foundation blocks that outline this
30-by-60-foot ranch house. But the significance is more in the feeling that
the area exudes, knowing that Theodore Roosevelt spent time there. It's the
environment that helped to mold his thinking about what might be good for
our country. It enabled him to put thoughts together. It's where he wrote a
portion of the speech he gave in Dickinson on July 4, 1886.
"So already, even at that time, this young, 29-year-old rancher in the
badlands in the 1880s can see that we need to take care of our cultural and
natural resources.
"He said in the speech, `It is incumbent on us here today to so act
throughout our lives as to leave our children a heritage for which we will
receive their blessings and not their curses.' To me, that's pretty powerful
stuff."
High winds prevented me from taking the dirt road out to Elkhorn. I figured
it would have meant driving 35 miles and back through a dust storm. Still,
the presence of Teddy Roosevelt could be felt all over Medora, the town
closest to the South Unit entrance, and in the grasslands and badlands
flanking the Little Missouri River. Cattleman Roosevelt came to Medora for
supplies. At the Medora station he caught the train that would take him back
to Albany and his seat in the New York legislature.
Small museums around town preserve the artifacts of 19th Century badlands
living. The one in the park visitor center contains a lot of Roosevelt
paraphernalia, from spurs to rifles to campaign posters.
Out back, in the Maltese Cross cabin, park volunteer Daniel Chapin showed me
the neat little kitchen with its iron stove and hefty utensils. Most of the
furnishings in the cabin were not really Roosevelt's, but they came from
that period and still evoke his presence.
"He wasn't much of a cook," Chapin said. "He tried cooking rice one day and
the pot started overflowing and soon every pot in the house had rice in it.
His friends came around, saw the mess and ordered him never to cook again.
That was fine with him."
In the little parlor, Chapin pointed out the writing desk and rocking chair
that really did belong to Roosevelt. At the desk, he wrote letters,
speeches, diary entries and part of "Hunting Trips of a Ranchman."
In the rocking chair, he would talk current events with the same enthusiasm
he showed on the floor of the New York Assembly, where he served from 1883
to 1886. "He would come out here for a month at a time, or a couple of
weeks, never full time," Chapin said. "He'd get involved in debates out
here, either politics or local things, and he'd start on one end of the room
and rock himself to the other side, he'd be so active and involved."
A national park grew out of Roosevelt's association with North Dakota, only
because a lot of people did a lot of maneuvering. After Roosevelt's death in
1919, admirers looked to establish some kind of memorial, but initial
efforts to designate some lands in North Dakota as a national park fell
short.
It wasn't until 1947 that the site was officially designated as Theodore
Roosevelt National Memorial Park, the only such park in the National Park
System. Local and congressional leaders from the region kept pestering for
full-fledged national park status, and that was achieved when President
Jimmy Carter signed the name change into law on Nov. 10, 1978, and included
29,920 acres of the park for preservation as national wilderness.
"The park honors Roosevelt's conservation efforts and his legacy," chief
interpreter Kaye explained. "There are a lot of natural and cultural
resources here. When he became president he was able to act upon the
feelings he developed here. He set 18 national monuments aside; he signed
into law five national parks. He established a host of bird refuges and game
reserves that eventually became part of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
"While he was president, Congress established a law called the Antiquities
Act that gave the president the authority to set land aside. The entire
world benefits from these parks. And today we hope that people who come to
this park can maybe experience some of the feelings that Theodore Roosevelt
felt and see some of the scenery that he saw."
I certainly saw the magnificence of the badlands and the bison--well, them I
could hardly avoid. Off in the distance, from one park overlook, I caught a
glimpse of the wild horses that seem to thrive in the South Unit. Roosevelt
observed horses too. They were released or escaped from ranches, and some
became the ancestors of the horses who roam freely through the park today.
"We call them feral, rather than wild," said another park volunteer, Brandon
Paynter. "The last wild horse died off in this area about 10,000 years ago.
Any horses that you see today are descended from horses brought over by
Europeans, most of them Spanish."
To get even more technical, the National Park Service designates its 150
feral horses as a "historic demonstration herd" because horses, although not
indigenous to the land like elk or prairie dogs, were on the scene during
Roosevelt's time.
When the economy went sour and hay too expensive, ranchers would shoo their
surplus horses into the wild. Tractors and trucks took over the chores ,
thereby rendering beasts of burden redundant.
"Horses become feral very easily," Paynter noted. "They like it a lot. There
are no predators in the park. The horses are big, they're strong and there's
not much to trouble them out here."
I also saw horses--domesticated, saddled or harnessed--on the streets of
Medora, the town closest to the South Unit entrance. It's the sort of
charmingly self-conscious burg where visitors can take carriage and
stagecoach tours or saddle up and ride around the neighborhoods and
countryside on their own.
In 1883, the Marquis de Mores, a French count, arrived in the territory by
way of New York with the idea that he would raise cattle and slaughter them
before shipping the beef east in refrigerator cars.
He quickly established a town on the east side of the Little Missouri and
named it after his New York socialite wife, Medora. They built a hilltop
chateau overlooking the slaughterhouse and some distant badlands ridges. The
chateau remains, open to the public and operated by the state. Mores'
slaughterhouse chimney still stands, near the South Unit entrance, but his
business died quickly. Tough meat from grass-fed cows could get a bit ripe
if the ice in the refrigerator cars melted too soon. Therefore,
discriminating meat-eaters shunned his product.
Medora still thrives, living out its historic legacy. The "Medora Musical,"
a summertime extravaganza, is known throughout the West. A nightly Pitchfork
Steak Fondue (yes, steak cooked by dipping it in hot oil) is considered one
of the best of its kind.
As I wandered through Medora one afternoon, I heard a voice booming, a man
speechifying. I turned a corner and saw President Theodore Roosevelt
standing on a bunting-draped balcony at the Rough Riders Hotel. He wore a
derby hat, a frock coat, a vest. He peered at a gathering crowd through
wire-rimmed glasses, and he shouted out his commitment to wildlife, the land
and the legacy of nature pristine that all of us should leave our children.
"I never would have been president if it had not been for my experience in
North Dakota," he declared.
The people in their shorts, sandals and T-shirts set aside their ice cream
cones and clapped their hands. Then they wandered off to shop for souvenirs
or scramble over the playground with its frontier-style toy buildings.
I hung around long enough to see Roosevelt, coatless now, leave the hotel
and drive away in a red GMC van. Locals informed me the man was Ray
Anderson, a star of the "Medora Musical." He also presents an afternoon
one-man show called "Bully" at the Medora Community Center, and, by all
accounts, bully it is.
To me, he represented an aspect of a national park region that I had only
vaguely imagined before I arrived. It seemed anonymous then--more rocks,
more water, lacking a distinguishing characteristic like Old Faithful or El
Capitan. But as I walked the trails, admired the scenery, encountered the
buffalo herd and soaked up the history, I realized that Theodore Roosevelt
National Park offers more surprises and little pleasures than you can shake
a big stick at.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/travel/chi-0307200322jul20,1,4382469.story?col
OUR NATIONAL PARKS
Bully for the badlands
Looking for adventure? It could surprise you in the North Dakota where T.R.
once roamed
July 20, 2003
By Robert Cross
Tribune staff reporter
Published July 20, 2003
THEODORE ROOSEVELT NATIONAL PARK, N.D.--One morning, a herd of bison--40
strong--clattered down the scenic drive that winds through the North Unit.
They forced my car off the road and into a ditch.
During the previous few days that I had spent at the South Unit, I saw only
one buffalo up close. Now I had seen more than enough.
But I get to look back on the episode as a hairy badlands adventure--the
kind of thing Theodore Roosevelt probably would have embellished even
further in one of his frontier journals.
The three units of Theodore Roosevelt National Park--one unit is the site of
Roosevelt's main ranch--offer more theatrics than a newcomer might expect.
It hardly ranks with headliners like Yellowstone and Yosemite. Yet a sense
of wonder comes through: Colorful badlands streaked with bands of pink,
blue, gray and yellow appear abruptly in a context of velvety green
grass--miles of grass, knee-high and lush. Animals--not only bison but feral
horses, elk, mule deer, white-tailed deer and even a few North Unit longhorn
cattle and bighorn sheep--all roam freely in a landscape of prairie and
oddly shaped rock formations.
The brute scenery got that way as the Rocky Mountains were growing up 60
million years ago. Ancient streams carried residues of volcanic ash and
eroded materials far out into what became known as the Great Plains.
The most dramatic badlands in what is now North Dakota occurred about 20 to
30 miles east of the Montana line. The North and South Units of the park
stand 50 miles apart, with the Roosevelt ranch site somewhat in between.
Those park units protect a portion of North Dakota so it looks the way the
eventual 26th president might have seen it when he first arrived in 1883,
six years before the Dakota Territory became two states.
Roosevelt came West looking for adventure and "the strenuous life." He
sought big game, hoping to bag the largest land mammal in North America. But
he discovered that the bison population had been all but wiped out by all
the hunters who preceded him. It took Roosevelt 13 days to hunt down and
kill his first bison, and soon after he began to understand that the
wilderness already suffered from irresponsible hunting, ranching, farming
and mining. Still, he developed an interest in the cattle business and
became a partner in the purchase of the Maltese Cross Ranch, about 7 miles
south of what later was established as the South Unit of the park.
In 1884, Roosevelt returned to North Dakota, mourning both his first wife
and his mother, who had died on the same day that year, Feb. 14. He threw
himself into cattle ranching and the outdoor life, keeping his partnership
in the Maltese Cross and starting a ranch all his own, the Elkhorn.
His cabin from the Maltese Cross Ranch once had been exhibited on the
Capitol grounds in Bismarck, and other places, but it's been given a
permanent home behind the South Unit visitor center.
That was where the future president lived during his early years out West.
Later, he built a place of his own, but it has not been so well preserved.
Those who venture out to the remote Elkhorn Ranch site find fragments of
building foundations and a couple hundred acres of raw North Dakota
landscape. Even so, National Park Service officials consider the Elkhorn
Ranch site an essential part of Theodore Roosevelt National Park.
"It's not so important in the sense that they can see something," explained
Bruce Kaye, the park's chief interpreter. "There's the grove of trees, the
actual site where Theodore Roosevelt put his second home, the principal home
as he called it, his home in the badlands.
"You can see a couple of the foundation blocks that outline this
30-by-60-foot ranch house. But the significance is more in the feeling that
the area exudes, knowing that Theodore Roosevelt spent time there. It's the
environment that helped to mold his thinking about what might be good for
our country. It enabled him to put thoughts together. It's where he wrote a
portion of the speech he gave in Dickinson on July 4, 1886.
"So already, even at that time, this young, 29-year-old rancher in the
badlands in the 1880s can see that we need to take care of our cultural and
natural resources.
"He said in the speech, `It is incumbent on us here today to so act
throughout our lives as to leave our children a heritage for which we will
receive their blessings and not their curses.' To me, that's pretty powerful
stuff."
High winds prevented me from taking the dirt road out to Elkhorn. I figured
it would have meant driving 35 miles and back through a dust storm. Still,
the presence of Teddy Roosevelt could be felt all over Medora, the town
closest to the South Unit entrance, and in the grasslands and badlands
flanking the Little Missouri River. Cattleman Roosevelt came to Medora for
supplies. At the Medora station he caught the train that would take him back
to Albany and his seat in the New York legislature.
Small museums around town preserve the artifacts of 19th Century badlands
living. The one in the park visitor center contains a lot of Roosevelt
paraphernalia, from spurs to rifles to campaign posters.
Out back, in the Maltese Cross cabin, park volunteer Daniel Chapin showed me
the neat little kitchen with its iron stove and hefty utensils. Most of the
furnishings in the cabin were not really Roosevelt's, but they came from
that period and still evoke his presence.
"He wasn't much of a cook," Chapin said. "He tried cooking rice one day and
the pot started overflowing and soon every pot in the house had rice in it.
His friends came around, saw the mess and ordered him never to cook again.
That was fine with him."
In the little parlor, Chapin pointed out the writing desk and rocking chair
that really did belong to Roosevelt. At the desk, he wrote letters,
speeches, diary entries and part of "Hunting Trips of a Ranchman."
In the rocking chair, he would talk current events with the same enthusiasm
he showed on the floor of the New York Assembly, where he served from 1883
to 1886. "He would come out here for a month at a time, or a couple of
weeks, never full time," Chapin said. "He'd get involved in debates out
here, either politics or local things, and he'd start on one end of the room
and rock himself to the other side, he'd be so active and involved."
A national park grew out of Roosevelt's association with North Dakota, only
because a lot of people did a lot of maneuvering. After Roosevelt's death in
1919, admirers looked to establish some kind of memorial, but initial
efforts to designate some lands in North Dakota as a national park fell
short.
It wasn't until 1947 that the site was officially designated as Theodore
Roosevelt National Memorial Park, the only such park in the National Park
System. Local and congressional leaders from the region kept pestering for
full-fledged national park status, and that was achieved when President
Jimmy Carter signed the name change into law on Nov. 10, 1978, and included
29,920 acres of the park for preservation as national wilderness.
"The park honors Roosevelt's conservation efforts and his legacy," chief
interpreter Kaye explained. "There are a lot of natural and cultural
resources here. When he became president he was able to act upon the
feelings he developed here. He set 18 national monuments aside; he signed
into law five national parks. He established a host of bird refuges and game
reserves that eventually became part of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
"While he was president, Congress established a law called the Antiquities
Act that gave the president the authority to set land aside. The entire
world benefits from these parks. And today we hope that people who come to
this park can maybe experience some of the feelings that Theodore Roosevelt
felt and see some of the scenery that he saw."
I certainly saw the magnificence of the badlands and the bison--well, them I
could hardly avoid. Off in the distance, from one park overlook, I caught a
glimpse of the wild horses that seem to thrive in the South Unit. Roosevelt
observed horses too. They were released or escaped from ranches, and some
became the ancestors of the horses who roam freely through the park today.
"We call them feral, rather than wild," said another park volunteer, Brandon
Paynter. "The last wild horse died off in this area about 10,000 years ago.
Any horses that you see today are descended from horses brought over by
Europeans, most of them Spanish."
To get even more technical, the National Park Service designates its 150
feral horses as a "historic demonstration herd" because horses, although not
indigenous to the land like elk or prairie dogs, were on the scene during
Roosevelt's time.
When the economy went sour and hay too expensive, ranchers would shoo their
surplus horses into the wild. Tractors and trucks took over the chores ,
thereby rendering beasts of burden redundant.
"Horses become feral very easily," Paynter noted. "They like it a lot. There
are no predators in the park. The horses are big, they're strong and there's
not much to trouble them out here."
I also saw horses--domesticated, saddled or harnessed--on the streets of
Medora, the town closest to the South Unit entrance. It's the sort of
charmingly self-conscious burg where visitors can take carriage and
stagecoach tours or saddle up and ride around the neighborhoods and
countryside on their own.
In 1883, the Marquis de Mores, a French count, arrived in the territory by
way of New York with the idea that he would raise cattle and slaughter them
before shipping the beef east in refrigerator cars.
He quickly established a town on the east side of the Little Missouri and
named it after his New York socialite wife, Medora. They built a hilltop
chateau overlooking the slaughterhouse and some distant badlands ridges. The
chateau remains, open to the public and operated by the state. Mores'
slaughterhouse chimney still stands, near the South Unit entrance, but his
business died quickly. Tough meat from grass-fed cows could get a bit ripe
if the ice in the refrigerator cars melted too soon. Therefore,
discriminating meat-eaters shunned his product.
Medora still thrives, living out its historic legacy. The "Medora Musical,"
a summertime extravaganza, is known throughout the West. A nightly Pitchfork
Steak Fondue (yes, steak cooked by dipping it in hot oil) is considered one
of the best of its kind.
As I wandered through Medora one afternoon, I heard a voice booming, a man
speechifying. I turned a corner and saw President Theodore Roosevelt
standing on a bunting-draped balcony at the Rough Riders Hotel. He wore a
derby hat, a frock coat, a vest. He peered at a gathering crowd through
wire-rimmed glasses, and he shouted out his commitment to wildlife, the land
and the legacy of nature pristine that all of us should leave our children.
"I never would have been president if it had not been for my experience in
North Dakota," he declared.
The people in their shorts, sandals and T-shirts set aside their ice cream
cones and clapped their hands. Then they wandered off to shop for souvenirs
or scramble over the playground with its frontier-style toy buildings.
I hung around long enough to see Roosevelt, coatless now, leave the hotel
and drive away in a red GMC van. Locals informed me the man was Ray
Anderson, a star of the "Medora Musical." He also presents an afternoon
one-man show called "Bully" at the Medora Community Center, and, by all
accounts, bully it is.
To me, he represented an aspect of a national park region that I had only
vaguely imagined before I arrived. It seemed anonymous then--more rocks,
more water, lacking a distinguishing characteristic like Old Faithful or El
Capitan. But as I walked the trails, admired the scenery, encountered the
buffalo herd and soaked up the history, I realized that Theodore Roosevelt
National Park offers more surprises and little pleasures than you can shake
a big stick at.