ESTABLISHED 1978
70,446 ACRES
ANNUAL VISITORS: 692,000

Harsh wind and weather have eroded this park’s sedimentary cliffs into chimerical shapes. Yet while seemingly austere, the park, through which the Little Missouri River flows, has a subtle quality. It is a place of prairies and wooded gullies, host to wildflowers and patches of juniper, and home to bison, bighorn sheep and elk. Before Theodore Roosevelt became president in 1901, he headed to the Dakota Territory to “bag a buffalo.” He fell in love with this land, saying, “It was here that the romance of my life began,” and noting that “I would not have been President had it not been for my experience in North Dakota.” The Maltese Cross Cabin, which Roosevelt first lived in, still stands here, and in Roosevelt’s honor, President Jimmy Carter made this the only park named for an individual.