The Marquis de Mores, a charismatic French nobleman, founded Medora in 1883 after the Northern Pacific Railroad had reached the badlands three years earlier and opened the region to entrepreneurs and adventurers from the East. For a few years the town grew and thrived as the local cattle industry flourished, but the severe winter of 1886-87 killed much of the area's livestock, causing the industry and eventually the town to collapse. Even in its prosperous years, Medora consisted of only a scattering of buildings and homes, with a catholic church, a general store, a hotel, and a train depot as its most notable buildings. De Mores' meat packing plant, the town's cornerstone operation and his chief business venture, shipped beef in refrigerated railcars until the extreme winter devastated area cattle herds and put the plant out of business, leaving only a chimney and a few stone walls. His twenty-six-room hunting lodge, built in 1883 on a hilltop overlooking the town he named for his wife, Medora, was later restored by the Civilian Conservation Corps and became a museum. Nearby, the tiny town of Little Missouri began around 1880 with the arrival of the railroad and construction of a military cantonment, then slowly dissolved after Medora was founded across the Little Missouri River. Decades later, Medora recovered from the ranching bust largely through Harold Schafer's investment to revitalize the town, and its economy now centers on tourism.
