Sully Creek State Park at Medora has been renamed Rough Rider State Park in conjunction with a campground expansion. (Amy Dalrymple/North Dakota Monitor)
By: Mary Steurer
MEDORA, N.D. (North Dakota Monitor) – A park in western North Dakota that owed its name to a United States military officer involved in the massacre of two Sioux Nation villages in the late 19th century has been renamed Rough Rider State Park.
The recreation site is located near Medora and Theodore Roosevelt National Park and borders the Little Missouri River. It was formerly named Sully Creek State Park after Sully Creek, which runs through the property.
The creek, in turn, was named after Alfred Sully, who served as a U.S. brigadier general during the American Indian Wars.
Dakota Goodhouse, a history and Indigenous studies instructor at United Tribes Technical College, called the renaming of the park “a wonderful step in our state’s history.”The Sioux Nation waged a decades-long resistance against the United States over the country’s continual westward expansion, in which U.S. forces engaged in the systemic killing and forced displacement and starvation of Native tribes.
Sully was responsible for the 1863 destruction of a Sioux village at Whitestone Hill, located in present-day southeast North Dakota. Historians estimate that 100-300 Native people were killed and around 160 were taken prisoner by his troops, according to the North Dakota State Historical Society. U.S. casualties numbered about 20.
Sully and his soldiers destroyed another Sioux village in the 1864 Battle of Killdeer Mountain. He reported killing between 100-150 villagers and losing two U.S. soldiers. Both battles were in response to the U.S.-Dakota War of 1862.
The name Rough Rider State Park is in honor of Theodore Roosevelt and the famed volunteer cavalry he led during the Spanish-American War.
The North Dakota Department of Parks and Recreation consulted with partners in western North Dakota, including local lawmakers, on the new name, said Cody Schulz, the agency’s director.
“One thing that just became apparent to us is the positive momentum out there going on — whether it’s the Presidential Library, Theodore Roosevelt National Park or the Theodore Roosevelt Medora Foundation,” Schulz said.
Renaming the property after the Rough Riders also makes sense because it’s an equestrian park, Schulz said.
“It has stables and corrals, so the Rough Rider name was just a perfect sweet spot for us,” Schulz said.
The new name coincides with a $4 million project to expand and improve the park. The project, approved by the state Legislature in 2023, will grow the park’s number of campsites from about 40 to 70. Other upgrades include adding individual corrals for campers with horses, and a new shower house that will double as a storm shelter, Schulz said. The park serves as a trailhead for the Maah Daah Hey Trail.
“We’re beyond excited to bring these changes to life as part of our commitment to enriching recreational opportunities for everyone,” he said in a statement announcing the name change.
Schulz said he doesn’t recall anyone complaining about the park’s former name.
“This is forward-looking,” he said.
Theodore Roosevelt has himself been criticized for holding racist beliefs as well as for his aggressive support of U.S. expansion.
“He was a man of his time, he was a product of his time,” said Goodhouse.
Still, the Rough Riders were a diverse group, he noted. The cavalry included horsemen from the Cherokee, Chickasaw and Pawnee nations, according to the National Museum of the American Indian.
Sully Creek State Park is not the first place in North Dakota named after the general to be renamed.
The former Sullys Hill, a federal wildlife refuge near Devils Lake, in 2019 had its name changed by Congress to White Horse Hill National Game Preserve at the request of the Spirit Lake Nation.
Plenty of other parks around North Dakota could benefit from a name change, Goodhouse said. He pointed to two parks in Bismarck — Custer Park and General Sibley Park and Campground — named after military officers George Custer and Henry Sibley, respectively.
General Sibley Park is where Sibley’s troops fought bands of Dakota and Lakota people the U.S. military believed were involved in the U.S.-Dakota War of 1862. Custer, meanwhile, is known for killing a village of Southern Cheyenne led by Chief Black Kettle in 1868, despite the fact that Black Kettle had been an advocate for peace with the United States government.
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