Beef Corral Bottom

In the era of the open range cattle industry of the late 1800’s, ranchers worked together in the spring and fall to round up free-ranging cattle and drive them to wide river bottoms like this one, where the animals could be worked and sorted. Locally called “Beef Corral Bottom,” this area was reportedly the site of a large corral constructed in 1880 for the operations of the Marquis de Mores, and it may have held cattle destined for the Marquis’s slaughterhouse in Medora. Disturbed land such as this also provides an ideal location for a prairie dog town, because prairie dogs prefer low-growing vegetation and rely on the colony’s many eyes and vocalizations to escape predators.

North Dakota · United States