Painted Canyon offers a view of color and light across a wild, broken landscape that has captivated many people who stood at its rim, including Native Americans, fur traders, a cavalry general, Theodore Roosevelt before he became the 26th President, naturalists, travelers, and writers. Theodore Roosevelt National Park includes the South Unit near Medora, where the main visitor center offers a museum, theater, the Maltese Cross Ranch Cabin, Roosevelt’s first home in the badlands, and the start of a 36-mile scenic drive, and the North Unit near Belfield, which offers a visitor center, exhibits, and a 13-mile scenic drive. In 1885, Theodore Roosevelt wrote that this broken country extended back from the river for many miles and had always been called the Bad Lands by Indians, French voyagers, and American trappers alike.