When heavy rain thwarted our pitchfork skewered steak, we got a burger at Boot’s. When lighting and thunder canceled our America 250 musical revue date night, we watched a movie on our laptop inside T@G. When we were early for the opening of a President Teddy’s library by a month, we drove the scenic loop of his namesake park. And when we made a wrong turn and missed the outdoor art enchantment, we took the long way to a familiar military fam camp. We are masters of the pivot but when it comes to the Badlands, we wanted a do-over; a rare second chance for a Dakota double dip.
The heart of the North Dakota Badlands is Medora. Founded by a French nobleman in 1883 as a cattle town, it got wiped out by a blizzard five years later, but not before Teddy Roosevelt visited. He would go on to become President while Medora would go on to become a ghost town. Fifty years later a wealthy American businessman bought Medora, restored the hotel and built an amphitheater into the side of a Butte. Teddy Roosevelt Memorial Park was minted. No one truly knows when the robot hosts left Westworld and came to Medora, but they are here now to indulge your most wholesome fantasies.
TR, which is how us fellow Dakotans’ refer to him, welcomed our return in his new 100,000 square feet home rooted into the Badlands landscape. Departed since 1919 but reincarnated as an artificial intelligence hologram, aiTR is living in every room of his Medora residence and holding court in the Oval Office. Flesh and blood us, plus AI versions of us, joined him as we stepped back in time to reflect on the major milestones of his life. Somewhere data centers were burning up their Nvidia GPUs powering the Westworld experience.
The library itself is a masterpiece in sustainable design, reminiscent of the beautiful Earthships of Taos, New Mexico, expect at billionaire home-size scale. Rammed earth walls, soaring ceilings, natural wood beams and a living roof blended into the iconic backdrop of the Dakota Badlands seamlessly.
TR only spent a few months of his 60 year life in the Dakota territories but it changed him. Most of his life was spent in D.C. or his home in New York, Sagamore Hill but his soul was in the wild. Sometimes it is hard to tell with AI programs, but we think TR is pretty pleased to be back in the Badlands.
Sharing the same high ground overlooking the Badlands with aiTR, the Burning Hills Dance Troupe has been putting on the Medora Musical live country western variety show since 1965. When something works, you don’t try and fix it. If you like your entertainment so wholesome that you find cat videos too edgy, then this is the show for you. The troupe rolled from Mellencamp’s Small Town cover to Battle Hymn of the Republic while riding horses, shooting off fire works, and kissing babies. The robot cast one-up’d each other on the joys of living in Medora which actually has a year-round population of only 100 humans. The guests, donned in their Westworld merch, cheered them on.
Our own Westworld wildness was tempered by very full stomachs from the Pitchfork Fondue feast. Everything is bigger in the Dakotas. You do not just order a steak dinner. In North Dakota, well in Medora before the musical anyway, one sticks dozens of New York strip on a pitch fork and shoves it into a boiling vat of oil for dinner. We can report that it is not the best way to prepare a steak. It is, however, among the most dramatic – and that’s very Dakota! TR would have loved it. For the record, aiTR eats GPUs, not steak.
With our coastal cynicism blasted away by the shear force of the Medora Musical, we headed south humming the National Anthem. Any road east or south would do, so we picked up a rural two-laner through the Dakota farmland that welder/artist Gary Greff has transformed into the Enchanted Highway. Since 1989, Gary has been welding the world’s largest metal sculptures together and placing them next to the roads lined with sunflower and hay farms. As lovers of over-sized outdoor art, we were kicking ourselves for that wrong turn that missed the Enchanted Highway the first time around. We were so glad we double dipped the Dakotas. The Enchanted Highway is better than the Eiffel Tower, which admittedly we have not seen.
Later we lunched in Lemmon, South Dakota at the city park which sits adjacent to 100,000 pieces of petrified wood that have been cemented into the shape of Christmas trees, castles and fountains. People in the Dakota’s are a little out there. Every power pole had an America 250 flag flying. Even the hay bales in the field were stamped with Old Glory on the outside of the roll.
By evening, we were perched on the edge of Badlands National Park in South Dakota at a commercial campground with a plug. Thunder storms put on a sound and light shows on the horizon. Eventually, the storm blew through and a rainbow stretched out in front of us across the Badlands which as far as we could tell, was not AI generated.
IN 2026, many feel that the political, economic and/or social fabric of the country is ready to tear. None of those problems have migrated to the Dakotas. Fields of literal sunflowers stretch to the horizon in every direction. The campgrounds are sold out. Gift shop merch is flying off the shelves. Packed Collette tour buses roll effortlessly across the grasslands. The Dakota beauty and optimism that moved the real TR to set aside over 230 million acres of land for future generations lives on. Fake it until you make it.
