The Little Missouri River

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Little Missouri River

The river that runs through Medora and Theodore Roosevelt National Park

The Little Missouri River flows north through Medora and all three units of Theodore Roosevelt National Park on its way to Lake Sakakawea. The gage at the Medora bridge reports its flow every 15 minutes. Check it before you paddle, fish or wade, and see whether today is high, low or normal for the date.

It is also the river T.R. ranched beside in the 1880s. He chased boat thieves down it through the ice, watched it run dry and rise overnight, and built his home ranch, the Elkhorn, on its west bank.

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T.R.’s river

T.R. stepped off the train beside the Little Missouri in September 1883. He ran cattle from the Maltese Cross Ranch, about seven miles south of Medora, and built his home ranch, the Elkhorn, on the river’s west bank about 35 miles north. In his books the river shrinks to a string of shallow pools, fills its banks overnight after a storm upstream, freezes hard enough for wolves to travel it and jams with ice in spring. In March 1886 thieves took his boat, and he and his two Maine men, Bill Sewall and Wilmot Dow, built another and chased them downriver through the ice.

No gage measured the river while he ranched here; the first readings at Medora were taken in 1903. Each chapter below sets T.R.’s own words beside what the instruments have recorded since.

Historic photograph of the Little Missouri River at the Elkhorn Ranch

The Little Missouri at the Elkhorn Ranch. (Harvard University, Houghton Library — Theodore Roosevelt Collection; rights per Harvard Library terms of use)

The river moves

The Little Missouri cuts into one bank and builds onto the other, so its bends drift across the bottoms over the decades. Drag the divider to compare General Land Office survey plats, aerial photographs from 1939 and 1957 and 1970s topographic maps with today’s imagery, at Medora and at the Elkhorn Ranch.

More than a century of records

Daily flow records at Medora begin on May 1, 1903, with gaps. The gage near Watford City, below the park’s North Unit, has run without a break since 1934. The biggest flood measured at Medora came on March 23, 1947, at 65,000 cubic feet per second. See every yearly peak, lay any past year over this one and find the records.

Theodore Roosevelt standing in a canoe and paddling toward shore on open water.

Paddling the Little Missouri

The National Park Service says fair boating needs at least 2.5 feet, about 699 cubic feet per second, at the Medora gage, and 699 to 1,500 cubic feet per second is good. May and June are usually the best months. Medora to the Long X Bridge on U.S. 85, near the North Unit, is 107.5 river miles, about five days.

Camping overnight in the national park takes a free backcountry permit from any park visitor center. Carry your own drinking water, watch for fences strung across the river and expect no cell service on long stretches.

Canoeing and kayaking in the park (NPS)

The ranch house stood on the brink of a low bluff overlooking the broad, shallow bed of the Little Missouri, through which at most seasons there ran only a trickle of water, while in times of freshet it was filled brimful with the boiling, foaming, muddy torrent.

Theodore Roosevelt An Autobiography, 1913

The Little Missouri River: common questions

Yes, when there is enough water. The National Park Service says fair boating needs at least 2.5 feet, about 699 cubic feet per second, at the Medora gage, and 699 to 1,500 cubic feet per second is good. May and June are usually the best months. The live reading at the top of this page shows where the river stands today.

The U.S. Geological Survey gage at the Medora bridge (06336000) reports flow and gage height every 15 minutes. The reading at the top of this page compares it with every year on record for the same date. The National Weather Service sets minor flooding at Medora at 15 feet, moderate at 18 feet and major at 20 feet.

At the Maltese Cross Ranch, about seven miles south of Medora, and at the Elkhorn Ranch, his home ranch, on the river’s west bank about 35 miles north. Only the foundation stones of the Elkhorn remain, in the Elkhorn Ranch Unit of Theodore Roosevelt National Park. Plan a visit to the Elkhorn.

Yes. At Medora, nearly half of the yearly high-water marks on record came in March or April, when snowmelt and ice go out. The largest flood measured there reached 65,000 cubic feet per second and a gage height of 20.5 feet on March 23, 1947. Summer thunderstorms can also raise the river with little or no warning. In dry years it can stop flowing altogether, most recently in 2018.

Since 1903, with gaps. Daily records cover 1903–1908, 1921–1924, 1928–1934, 1945–1975 and 2001 to the present. Nothing was measured during T.R.’s years in the Badlands, 1883 to 1898.

North Dakota designated it a State Scenic River in 1975, from the South Dakota line to Lake Sakakawea, to keep it in a free-flowing natural condition.