A $450 million monument to the president who found himself in the Badlands

Countries & Cities · Published 12 October 2026 Swipe more like this →

In short: Theodore Roosevelt’s time in North Dakota was brief, yet he claimed it was the foundation of his presidency. Now, a massive $450 million museum is rising from the Badlands to preserve that legacy, standing as a rare non-NARA presidential library built by a private non-profit.

Theodore Roosevelt first arrived in the North Dakota Badlands on September 8, 1883, originally intending to hunt bison. However, the landscape became a site of profound personal transformation. Following the deaths of his wife, Alice, and his mother, Mittie, on Valentine's Day in 1884, Roosevelt sought refuge in the territory, investing in the Maltese Cross and Elkhorn ranches. He famously remarked that the region was where the "romance of my life began."

The new museum, located about 1.5 miles west of Medora, sits on a 93-acre site featuring grassland and Badland terrain. Selected in March 2020 from eleven candidates, the land was previously owned by the U.S. Forest Service. The project's scale is immense: the 93,000-square-foot building cost $450 million to construct. While many presidential libraries are official National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) institutions, this museum is a private non-profit endeavor.

The architectural selection process was highly competitive. After narrowing forty firms down to fourteen, and then to three finalists—Snøhetta, Studio Gang, and Henning Larsen—the Norway-based firm Snøhetta was chosen in September 2020. The museum is scheduled to open to the public on July 4, 2026, coinciding with the 250th anniversary of the United States. Its presence in North Dakota is supported by local enthusiasm and the potential for economic and tourism development, despite some viewing the location as a calculated risk due to the small local population.

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