Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
THEODORE ROOSEVELT MEDORA FOUNDATION
help run a booming tourist town
MEDORA, NORTH DAKOTA
Medora is a place where people can connect with history, entertainment
and other people.
—Annika Nelson,
Theodore Roosevelt Medora Foundation Development Assistant
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To hear Teddy Roosevelt tell it, Medora, a ranching town in western North Dakota, was
the “romance of his life.” In fact, he used to say that if it wasn't for his experience in North
Dakota, he'd have never been elected President. Roosevelt first showed up in the North Dakota
badlands for a buffalo hunt in 1883, when he was a young New York politician. He liked the
area so much that he bought two ranches, the Maltese Cross, just south of Medora, and Elk-
horn, 35 miles north.
Medora today is still a mystical place where people come because, like Roosevelt said,
it has the power to change your life. In the winter, the little community has barely a hundred
people, mostly folks who ranch or manage the Theodore Roosevelt National Park or the gov-
ernment business of being the Billings County seat. But in the summer, when folks are out of
school or off work, they flock from all over the country to Medora in droves. Something like
300,000 show up any given summer.
Needless to say, that's too big a crowd for the permanent residents to feed and house and
sell souvenirs to. So, in 1998, the Theodore Roosevelt Medora Foundation, a nonprofit organ-
ization that promotes the area, came up with the brilliant scheme of bringing in volunteers who
could serve the locally famous pitchfork fondue (steaks speared on pitchforks and cooked over
fire); usher at the Burning Hills Amphitheater, a 2,900-seat theater that since 1958 has been
presenting the high-energy
Medora Musical;
clear tables at the Chuckwagon Buffet; and greet
tourists at the Information Center.
SPEAKING OF NORTH DAKOTA AND VOLUNTEERING
