... Medora began as a military cantonment called Little Missouri. It was officially named Medora in 1883 by the Marquis de Mores, an entrepreneurial French nobleman with a big dream for a meat-packing empire. He named the town after his wife, Medora von Hoffman.

... That same year, a young Theodore Roosevelt made his first visit to Medora — where he would later find solace and strength after the death of his wife. Many years after that, he would tell an audience in Fargo: “I never would have been President had it not been for my time in North Dakota.”

... In the 1950s, Harold Schafer—North Dakota-born businessman and owner of the Gold Seal Company—took an interest in a worn-out cowtown called Medora. He purchased and revitalized the historic but run-down Rough Riders Hotel. He acquired an amphitheatre built into the side of a butte and helped create the Medora Musical. Then, in 1986, he retired from business and donated the entirety of his Medora properties to establish the non-profit Theodore Roosevelt Medora Foundation.