Medora: The Town the Marquis Built
Every national park seems to have a gateway town it deserves, and Medora is the proof case. A cluster of boardwalk storefronts at the foot of painted badlands, framed by the Little Missouri River valley, it was founded in 1883 by a French nobleman who named it for his wife - and today it is the liveliest two-block town in North Dakota, part history museum, part summer theater, entirely charming.
A Town With a Story
The story is delightfully improbable. Antoine, the Marquis de Mores, arrived in 1883 at age 24 with a fortune, a scheme to revolutionize the beef industry, and the energy to build a town, a meatpacking plant, and a 26-room chateau on the hill above the river - all in the space of a couple of years. The empire eventually collapsed, but the town kept his wife's name and a fair share of his audacity. Walking Front Street today, between the general store, the saloons, and the views up the valley, you are walking through the fastest boom-and-boom town the Badlands ever produced.
The Summer Town
We came in on a mid-July day among the crowds that Medora feeds all summer. The essentials: the North Dakota Cowboy Hall of Fame shares town; the Chateau de Mores sits on its hill just south; and the town's signature events - the Pitchfork Steak Fondue, where steaks are cooked on actual pitchforks, and the Medora Musical in the Burning Hills Amphitheatre - have been drawing families here for generations. Mini golf, ice cream, galleries, the works. It is touristy in the best, most honest way: the tourism funds the history that makes the place worth visiting.
Our Take
Medora pairs perfectly with the national park - the same land, two ways of loving it. Spend your mornings in the Badlands with the bison, your afternoons on Front Street with the ice cream, and if your schedule allows, an evening at the amphitheatre with the sun going down behind the buttes. And if you are staying outside town, as we did at Buffalo Gap Ranch, the two miles home to the rig is the quietest drive in western North Dakota.