The Spring 2023 edition of Wild Badlands, Issue #50, is now available!
Jay Grantier has been vital to the BCA mission since its very first meeting, in part because he has authentic roots in the North Dakota badlands. His father was a cowboy in the "way back" time when cattle were first making their way to the badlands from Texas.
Farrell spent five years researching and interviewing to write this book. The book is a sociological study of a community where the rich chase beautiful, tax-friendly places and as the author says, “game the system. In most counties in the United States, the population estimates from the census are similar to the number of people claiming residency for tax purposes. Not in Teton County. It has the largest discrepancy between the number of people who actually live there and the number of people who claim to for tax purposes.”
I suppose I will claim that the Badlands belong to no one and to everyone: national status should be a shared sense of belonging for yucca, sheep, juniper, rattlesnakes, wolves, coyotes, Cottonwoods, scoria and gumbo, buffalo, wild horses, tourists, golfers, hikers, Cottonwoods, the watercourses, Cottonwoods, historical faith in our country and its hopes, Cottonwoods.
In 2021, I wrote a bit about one of the Badlands’ smaller charismatic denizens, the Ord’s Kangaroo Rat. This time it’s a much larger one, our Bighorn Sheep, its near extinction and recovery. The bighorn had its origin in the Old World during the last ice age. It is in the cattle family, the Bovidae, along with bison, mountain goats and a plethora of other Old World and domesticated species. They crossed to North America via the Bering Straits Land Bridge at the end of the Pleistocene, the oldest North American fossils having been dated at around 110,000 years.
Recommended reading: The Designed Landscape of the North Dakota Badlands: Weldon and Marjorie Gratton, Faithful Stewards and Genuine Collaborators, by Steve C. Marten. North Dakota History, v. 80, no. 2, Summer 2015.
As reported by the Bismarck Tribune, May 23, 2022, Theodore Roosevelt National Park has a new Superintendent, Angie Richman, who has arrived in Medora. Her predecessor, Wendy Ross, left last fall to begin as a deputy director for three U.S. Interior Department regions in the Midwest.
In November 2021, TRNP held meetings for their Comprehensive Site Planning Update which BCA attended. BCA will continue to be engaged in this important planning process.
The Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library has been in the news with stories on Prairie Public Radio and other outlets, highlighting the progress of the fundraising, design, land purchases from the USFS and donated land from the Theodore Roosevelt Medora Foundation, upcoming public meetings, and events, as well as the projected build date and grand opening plans. BCA members including board members have continued to be in conversations with the leadership of this project including with the Roosevelt family members and other key supporters. The TRPL office is located in Medora, right across the street from the historic Rough Riders Hotel, and a few blocks from the entrance to Theodore Roosevelt National Park (South Unit). At this time, a prototype of the planned exhibits is found within the Chateau des Mores State Historic Site. Some BCA members have stopped in to see it and gave it TOP MARKS!
Hiking Bullion Butte with the friends of the Badlands Conservancy Association was a fantastic way to spend Memorial Day.
By Dr. Mike Vandall
A very friendly and energetic group of twenty-six avid outdoor enthusiasts from all over the State met in Medora for the Badlands Conservation Alliance Bullion Butte hike. This was a very strenuous day-long undertaking, making time for interesting discussions and presentations about history, Theodore Roosevelt, and the geography and geology of The Little Missouri River and Badlands. Other topics of discussion were the native fauna and flora of the Badlands.
They’ll always be the Good Lands to me.
BCA lost a valuable member this past fall. He won’t be easy to replace. There’ll be a noticeable gap in the hiking line on our outings next summer. There’ll be one less pair of strong arms to carry wood to the campsite. There’ll be a little less humor in the conversations around the campfire. And there’s already a big hole in the hearts of the family and friends who loved Larry Dopson.
And while we are sipping the coffee
She tells of the tiresome toil.
Up hill and down hill she traveled
O’er plowed and o’er prairie soil.
The Theodore Roosevelt Center at Dickinson State University is holding the annual TR Symposium on Sept. 15-17, 2022. “The Athlete in the Modern Arena: Theodore Roosevelt and the Development of Modern Sports”. Longtime Director Sharon Kilzer (who joined the May 2022 BCA Bullion Butte hike) has retired. The TR Center is moving into its new space in the building formerly known as Pulver Hall. Board member Clay Jenkinson is the Humanities Scholar for the Center and former Theodore Roosevelt National Park Superintendent Valerie Naylor writes an occasional blog for the website.
Quoting the late US Senator John McCain, your BCA board of directors made a great effort over the past year to ‘return to regular order’ after the many disruptions caused by the coronavirus pandemic. We sincerely hope that cancelled annual meetings, cancelled outings, and virtual board meetings via Zoom call will become a thing of the past.
The Badlands Conservation Alliance has begun to put together a White Paper on its concerns about the North Dakota outback, particularly the Badlands. We believe that the people of North Dakota (and beyond) are eager to know just what is at stake in the Little Missouri River Valley in the third decade of the twenty-first century. They want to know what sorts of development threaten one of the most storied and important places in America.