Living Our Dream

Theodore Roosevelt National Park Part II: North Unit

The entrance to the South Unit of Theodore Roosevelt National Park is located right in the town of Medora, ND, while the North Unit is located about an hour's drive to the north of Medora and the interstate. Consequently, the North Unit doesn't get nearly as many visitors as the South Unit. That's too bad, because many people (including us) think the North Unit is more rugged and the contrast between the grasslands and badlands is strikingly more beautiful than the South Unit.

During the Ice Age, glaciers reached down out of Canada as far as the northern boundary of the North Unit. Ice sheets dammed the rivers that previously flowed north to Hudson Bay causing them to flow east and south to the Mississippi. The new courses of the rivers were steeper causing the rivers to flow faster. The faster flow in the area that is now the North Unit caused the rivers erode away more of the soft, sedimentary rock creating deeper canyons and gullies than in the South Unit.

This year, especially since we have been traveling across the northern part of the country, we have been encountering landscapes that have been influenced by melting glaciers. We keep wondering what caused the glaciers to melt so long ago before the existence of man-made greenhouse gases that are being blamed for global warming today.

Not only are the canyons deeper, we think there is more contrast and more color in the layers of sediment in the North Unit. The photo below shows typical layering and colors in the North Unit.

The road in the North Unit extends into the park for a distance of 14 miles. The road is currently undergoing extensive renovation, and some stretches (especially at the eastern end of the park) are gravel. We hit a couple of brief construction delays, but nothing major.

Slump blocks are common feature in the North Unit. Because of the deeper valleys in the north, large blocks of the soft rock and clay sometimes break free and slide down into the valley more or less intact. You can easily spot the slump blocks because the layers are sloped rather than being horizontal. The next photo shows one of several slump blocks located a short distance into the park.

The next formation shows how the layers erode differently. Harder layers about one third and about two thirds of the way down have created steps with strong vertical lines in the softer layers below.

 

The thick, softer layers of the formation in the above photo are also host to hard inclusions called concretions. Concretions are deposits of cement-like mineral, frequently a calcite or silica, that form around a seed grain and grow within the porosity of the softer sediment layer. The concretions can be as small as a grain of sand or up to 10 feet in diameter such as some of those at Theodore Roosevelt National Park. The one in the foreground in the photo below is about 6 feet in diameter. You can see other concretions embedded in the hillside. Although they can be other shapes, the concretions are usually round or ovoid.

 

A little farther along the road, we stopped at Caprock Coulee Trail. Coulee is another name for a deep, dry stream bed or gully. Caprock Coulee Trail is almost two miles long; but since Margery was fighting a cold and feeling a little under the weather, Paul hiked the first three-quarters of a mile of the trail by himself. The first part of the trail is a nature trail, and maps are available with descriptions of formations and plants along the way. The trail follows a coulee and provides closeup views of the colorful strata. Notice the caprocks sticking out of the left side of the hill near the top.

There were more caprocks near the bottom, too.

A little farther along, there was also a good view of a slump block to the right at the bottom of the cliff.

There was quite a bit of petrified wood along the wall on the far side of the coulee and at the end of the nature trail. The petrified wood here is much less colorful than that at Petrified Forest National Park in Arizona that we visited earlier this year.

As we continued driving the park road, we came to a pull-off overlooking an "S-bend" in the Little Missouri River. The shelter overlooking the river was built in the 1930s by the CCC (Civilian Conservation Corps).

There was more red scoria at the overlook.

From the river overlook, the road turns north toward the northern boundary of the park. On the north side of the road, there were rolling grasslands as far as you could see. We saw several herds of bison grazing.

 

On the opposite side of the road, there were badlands stretching to the river valley.

 

This area near the northern boundary of the park marks the southern edge of a glacier that existed here during the Ice Age. This is evidenced by the presence of stray boulders, called "erratics." They are called erratics because they don't match any of the local rock and they really don't belong there. They were carried from several hundred miles away by the glacier.

 

At the end of the park road is Oxbow Overlook. An oxbow is a lake that is created when a river changes course and a curve of the river is cut off leaving a lake. The oxbow along the Little Missouri is dry only fills with water during floods. The photo below shows the bend in the river near where the oxbow is located. We weren't sure of the exact location of the oxbow since it was dry when we were there, but we think it is on the gray-colored plain to the left.

 

From Oxbow Overlook, we retraced our route back to the visitor center, then back to the motor home. Fortunately, we were able to pass through the construction areas in the park with no delays on our way back.

From Medora, we headed east and then south. As our summer sightseeing winds down, we'll still have some interesting stops along the way, so keep looking for our posts.

Theodore Roosevelt National Park Part I: South Unit

From Billings, MT, we had a choice of heading southeast then east on I-90 through our "home" state of south Dakota or of heading northeast then east on I-94 through North Dakota. Even though we eventually wanted to be heading south, we picked the northerly route since we had never been to North Dakota before.

It was a fairly long (for us) drive of about 5 hours from Billings, MT to Medora, ND, where we stopped at Red Trail Campground. The main roads at Red Trail are paved, but the side roads and the pads are a mix of dirt and gravel. There is sparse grass between the sites. Red Trail has full hookups available (there are some sites without sewer) and cable TV. Some of the sites have 50-amp electric, and there is also free Wi-Fi. The photo below shows our site at Red Trail RV.

 

Red Trail would be a nice, quiet campground except for the trains. Medora is a small town, and there are only two roads in town that cross the railroad tracks. Train engineers must sound their horns at all crossings, and therein lies the problem. Unfortunately, Red Trail is only about two blocks from one of the crossings, and the only other campground in town is close to the other crossing. Trains run fairly frequently day and night. You can also sometimes hear some music from a bar in town that has live entertainment in the evenings. Fortunately, it's not excessively loud, and it ends relatively early.

The reason we stopped in Medora was to visit Theodore Roosevelt National Park. Three separate areas make up the park - the South Unit, the North Unit, and the Elkhorn Ranch Unit. The Elkhorn Ranch Unit is located in a remote area that can only be reached by dirt roads, and it was the location of Roosevelt's ranch. Since none of the buildings remain, we decided not to go to that area. The North Unit is located about an hour north of Medora, and we'll have more on the North Unit in our next post. The entrance to the South Unit is located right in the town of Madora; and since it was so close, we went there first.

Medora is a small, quaint, western-themed town. We stopped on our way to the national park to pick up our mail and were surprised at how picturesque the town is. The photo below shows the Post Office, a bank, and a little church.

Once inside the park, we first stopped at the visitor center to reconnoiter as we usually do. We watched the movie and learned a little more about Theodore Roosevelt and about the park. There is a wooden sculpture of the park's namesake in the visitor center.

Theodore Roosevelt first came to North Dakota in the winter of 1883-1884 to hunt buffalo. Although he was from New York, he had a keen interest in the West. By the time he left North Dakota in the spring, he had acquired a share of the Maltese Cross Ranch located about 7 miles south of Medora. Later in 1884, he built a second ranch, the Elkhorn, located about 35 miles north of Medora on the Little Missouri River. Roosevelt actively participated in ranching until 1887, but maintained ranching interests in the area until 1898. It was in North Dakota that Roosevelt sharpened his interest in nature and conservation.

Roosevelt became Vice President under William McKinnley in March, 1901. Back in that day, the office of the Vice President was sort of a dead end, and his political enemies forced him into the job hoping to end his political career. Their plan backfired, however, when President McKinley died in office after only 6 months and Roosevelt became the 26th President of the United States. 

 When we planned to go to Theodore Roosevelt National Park, we weren't sure what to expect. We found out the Little Missouri River has shaped the area into rugged badlands of hills, cliffs, gullies, and valleys. Although there is little rainfall, the relatively soft sedimentary rock and clay have been eroded into interesting shapes. The photo below shows some of those gullies and valleys.

There is a 36-mile loop road that traverses around the South Unit. One of the first areas we came to after leaving the visitor center was one of many prairie dog towns. Prairie dogs are ground squirrels that get their name from the bark-like warning sound they make. There were hundreds of little mounds along both sides of the road.

 

A little farther along, we saw a bison eating grass along the side of the road. There are several hundred bison in the South Unit, but this was the only one we saw all day long.

There are also numerous feral horses in the South Unit of the park. These guys stopped what they were doing and put their heads together like they were posing for us. However, they seemed a little feisty, so we stayed well back until they decided to get off the road on their own before we attempted to pass.

The next photo shows another of several more groups of horses we saw.

One of the first overlooks we came to is called Scoria Point, which provides a view of red layers of rock. Layers of lignite coal contained in the sediment can be ignited by lightening strikes and can burn for years. The burning lignite will bake layers of clay and turn them red like brick. This red rock is frequently called scoria, although true scoria is formed by hot magma. Fired clay like that at Thoedore Roosevelt National Park is technically called porcelanite. The next photo shows the view at Scoria Point.

The scoria has been hardened by fire, but most of the other layers are quite soft. The layers were formed by runoff of mud and silt from the eastern face of the Rockies and by ash from the volcanic eruptions across the west. The mud, silt, and ash were carried to the east and were deposited in layers. The lignite coal was formed from layers of plant matter. Some of the ancient trees that fell were covered by ash and were turned to petrified wood. The layers of sediment hardened into sandstone, mudstone, and clay, which were subsequently eroded by water runoff as the water found its way to the Missouri and Little Missouri Rivers. Although the area only gets about 15 inches of rain  a year, most of it comes as infrequent, but heavy downpours. The next photo is a closer view of some of the sediment layers and lines of erosion.

 

There aren't a lot of harder rocks in the layers, but where rocks exist, they frequently act as caprocks that protect the softer layers underneath from erosion. The caprocks are sometimes left standing on pillars of protected, softer sediment.

 

About half way around the loop road is Buck Hill where we took a short trail (about .2 miles each way) to the top.

There are great views of the badlands.

We also stopped about three quarters of the way around the loop road at Wind Canyon. There is a .3 mile hike along the edge of the wind-sculpted canyon...

 

...that ends up at an overlook above the Little Missouri River.

 

Down in the mud along the far bank of the river, we could see animal tracks leading to the edge of the water. The tracks looked a little too big for deer. Maybe they were elk.

 

The next photo shows us by the ridge that overlooked the river.

 

From Wind Canyon, the road follows the valley along the river before completing its loop and returning to the visitor center.

Check out our next post, and we'll tell you about our visit to the North Unit of Roosevelt National Park.