July 27, 2025 - Driving from Alaska to Maryland
Loop Drive - Teddy Roosevelt NP
After our hike, we continued on the Loop Drive around the Park. Actually, it wasn't a loop because of road construction toward the end, so you just had to make a U-turn and drive all the way back around. But it wasn't that long of a drive.
Here we are driving through the Little Missouri Badlands.
Back at the Visitor Center, we checked out Teddy Roosevelt's Maltese Cross Ranch log cabin.
This was Theodore Roosevelt's first cabin in the Dakota Territory. It was used by Roosevelt from 1883 to 1884, before he became president. Like many other ranchers in Dakota Territory, Roosevelt squatted on public lands, or lands owned by the Northern Pacific Railroad. Roosevelt did not own any acreage during his time in the territory, and the Maltese Cross (Chimney Butte) Ranch had already been named previously.
The Maltese Cross Ranch cabin was originally located about seven miles south of Medora in the wooded bottom-lands of the Little Missouri River. At Roosevelt's request, ranch managers Sylvane Ferris and Bill Merrifield built a 1+1⁄2-story cabin complete with a shingled roof and root cellar. Constructed of durable ponderosa pine logs, the cabin was considered somewhat of a "mansion" in its day, with wooden floors and three separate rooms (kitchen, living room and Roosevelt's bedroom). The steeply pitched roof, an oddity on the northern plains, created an upstairs sleeping loft for the ranch hands.
During Roosevelt's presidency, the Maltese Cross cabin was exhibited at the World's Fair in St. Louis, Missouri and at the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition in Portland, Oregon in 1905. In 1910, it was moved again, this time, to the state fairgrounds in West Fargo, North Dakota and then eventually on the state capitol grounds in Bismarck where it remained until 1959 before the cabin was relocated to its present site and renovated.
Roosevelt's second ranch, the Elkhorn, was built in 1884 and was located about 35 miles north of Medora on the Little Missouri River. After its construction, Roosevelt considered the Elkhorn his "home ranch" and spent most of his time there whenever he was in residence in the Dakotas.
