It was Theodore Roosevelt who—even before he became President—guided, expanded and protected the National Park system in time to preserve the great Yellowstone wilderness. Later, as President and as the leading conservationist of his era, he created the Forest Service and quadrupled the holdings of the National Forests to nearly 200 million acres; and he established numerous wildlife refuges, signed the Act that allowed the President to proclaim National Monuments and National Parks, and created by proclamation 23 such areas.
Today the Marquis De Morès’s weighted bamboo stick is in the collection housed in the splendidly preserved De Morès Chateau on the bluff (“Graveyard Butte”) overlooking the town of Medora, North Dakota. The property was given by Louis Vallombrosa (eldest son of the Marquis) to the State of North Dakota, and is administered by the State Historical Society. Its restoration began in 1936; the work was performed by a WPA crew whose labors were fueled and made happy by thousands of intact bottles of wine they found in the cellar beneath the lady Medora’s kitchen.
Thanks to contributions made by the De Morès heirs and by other benefactors, the chateau contains a fascinating collection of possessions from the 1880s including quite a few of the couple’s hunting trophies, furnishings, decorations, books, clothes, weapons, utensils and art works, the latter including a small watercolor that Madame la Marquise painted of the château—slightly impressionistic, very pleasing; Medora had a good eye for color and design.
In the visitor center near the chateau stands one of the four Concord coaches used by De Morès’s ill-fated Deadwood stage line.
The portrait of Madame la Marquise that is the most popular likeness was painted by the artist Charles Jalabert in New York City when she was still Medora Von Hoffman; reproductions are all over the town that was named after her—even on the place-mats of local cafes. The original painting hangs in Bismarck.
Medora town, now restored and developed as a tourist attraction, is much as it was in the 1880s. Harold Schafer, founder of the Gold Seal Company in Bismarck, and his wife were the architects of the town’s restoration. Among the revived town’s attractions are Joe Ferris’s store—still operating as a general store—the rebuilt Bad Lands Cow Boy shack, the railroad depot, the little brick church that Madame la Marquise caused to be built, and the onetime De Morès Hotel (now, with wonderful irony, called the “Rough Riders”—De Morès would have shrieked).
The great abattoir-slaughterhouse burned down on March 17, 1907, but the foundations and the awesomely tall chimney remain to mark the site.
The railroad is still in use across the unpredictable Little Missouri, and Riley Luffsey’s grave is on the butte; take a walk along the embankments on a certain sort of Bad Lands day and it seems not much of a stretch to imagine the footprints of the Lunatic and those who pursued him.
Among the best preserved and least Disneyfied of the restored “ghost towns” of the Old West, Medora brims over with artifacts and scenery that bring to life the Roosevelt-De Morès era.
The town is gateway to the spectacular Bad Lands of the 70,000-acre Theodore Roosevelt National Park, given federal protection in 1947 and National Park status in 1978. For anyone interested in the real West and its history and its morality fables, a visit is virtually mandatory. (The site of Roosevelt’s Elkhorn Ranch is approximately in the middle of the Park.)
Roosevelt actually had two Dakota ranches—the Maltese Cross seven miles south of Medora and the Elkhorn thirty-four miles north of town. The cabin that stands today at the headquarters of the South Unit of the Theodore Roosevelt National Park (just at the edge of Medora town) was Roosevelt’s original Maltese Cross ranch house. No buildings from the Elkhorn have survived, although the site of the ranch is still accessible by foot trail from a nearby park road, once the traveler obtains permission from the rancher whose land provides access to it.
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It has been suggested, not without justification, that the image of the Wild West that prevailed during a good part of the twentieth century was to a surprising extent due to the activities of three men: Frederic Remington, who painted it; Owen Wister, who wrote about it (The Virginian); and Theodore Roosevelt, the American Winston Churchill, who not only wrote about the West in its heyday of adventure but created a good part of The Myth by living it in the Bad Lands.
The three men—all Ivy Leaguers (Harvard and Yale), all contemporaries—were close friends. The portrait of the West in the works of Remington and Wister was based in part on the experiences of their friend Roosevelt. Therefore it may not be too surprising that some of the set-piece conventions that became familiar in pulp fictions and “B” movies are to be found unabashedly in the real life of that astonishing unique American hero, Theodore Roosevelt.
Medora von Hoffman Vallombrosa, Marquise De Morès
Theodore Roosevelt in the Bad Lands, 1884
A.C. Huidekoper
Marquis De Morès in the Bad Lands, 1884
Theodore Roosevelt in his new buckskin coat
Arthur T. “Pack” Packard
Joe Ferris
Theodore Roosevelt on his horse Manitou
Letter from Theodore Roosevelt to Marquis De Morès
LEFT TO RIGHT:
Wilmot Dow, Theodore Roosevelt, Bill Sewall
Theodore Roosevelt captures boat thievs
(PHOTO BY THEODORE ROOSEVELT)
Theodore Roosevelt, ranchman
Acknowledgments
It gives me pleasure to acknowledge, with great gratitude, the invaluable assistance provided by Todd Strand and the other archivists who keep track of the Roosevelt and De Morès collections at the State Historical Society of North Dakota, North Dakota Heritage Center, Bismarck; by the people of Medora, North Dakota; by the staff of the De Morès château; by the Rangers of the Theodore Roosevelt National Park, including Denise Heidecker of the National Park Service who indulged my foolishness by agreeing to take a picture of me in front of Theodore Roosevelt’s cabin; all the memoirists, acquaintances, reporters, historians and biographers (see Bibliography) who made my work possible by writing in such extensive detail about Theodore Roosevelt and his days in Dakota Territory; and—indispensibly and most generously—by Dr. John Gable, director of the Theodore Roosevelt Association at Sagamore Hill, Oyster Bay, Long Island, New York.