North Dakota
A ‘showstopper’ wall rises in Medora, putting the Badlands’ true colors on display
MEDORA, N.D. — From its beginnings, the design concept for the future
Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library
in Medora was an ambitious one, a “journey through a preserved landscape … a continuum between past and present,” according to the international architecture giant Snøhetta, which was commissioned for the job.
The Oslo-based firm’s concept included elements it said would integrate the ethos of the man the facility was built to honor.
“Our design … is informed by the president’s personal reflections on the landscape, his commitment to environmental stewardship, and the periods of quiet introspection and civic engagement that marked his life,” Snøhetta announced.
As the exterior of the library nears completion and a grand opening is slated for July 4, 2026, the architect’s visionary concept is coming to life, highlighted during a tour of the site by a recently-completed, towering, rammed-earth wall.
Anna Paige / The Forum
The wall, which Snøhetta touted as “one of the most visually striking aspects” of its design, is daunting in scale, reaching 30 feet in the air toward a sprawling ceiling of exposed timber panels and beams, and stretching 240 feet across what will be the building’s main hall. Bearing a remarkable resemblance to the sedimentary striations of North Dakota’s Badlands, its rough-hewn surface is pocked and porous, with uneven layers, and an earthy palate of sand, stone, mud and dust.
The rammed-earth technique is an archaic one, with evidence of its use found as far back as 5000 B.C. The rammed-earth portions of the Great Wall of China are celebrated by the United Nations’ World Heritage Convention as “exceptional testimony to the civilizations of ancient China.”
The last time the technique captured North Dakotans’ attention was the 1930s, when the Works Progress Administration and Col. Paul Southworth Bliss in southwest North Dakota championed it as a fireproof and efficient means of home construction, according to a forthcoming book by Jim Fuglie and Lillian Crook.
In more recent times, the rammed-earth technique has gained newfound popularity due to its environmentally-friendly, sustainable process and energy efficient qualities, but up until last year, when Winn Construction in Dickinson took up the challenge to build it, no such large-scale rammed-earth wall existed in the state.
Willie Winn, the concrete company’s owner, and Kenny Jessop, a Winn supervisor who oversaw the project, have spent their entire careers in the construction business, but the rammed-earth technique was new to them.
In order to better understand the task at hand, Winn and his team traveled to visit large, public rammed-earth walls in Cheyenne and Sheridan, Wyoming. A consultant was brought in to help determine the critical recipe for the mixture of earth that would be used for the project as part of the learning process.
But after that, the Winn team was on their own to erect what was to be the centerpiece of the library’s interior.
“It really started at our shop in Dickinson,” Jessop said. “We started with a 10-foot-tall mock-up wall.”
Winn said a lot of trial and error went into determining the particular formula for the wall’s earthen mixture.
Tasha Carvell
Almost immediately, the team realized the local gravel they were using had too much moisture, necessitating the construction of a temporary structure on site to dry it out.
The process for building the wall is a particular and labor-intensive one. Jessop described how forms were placed first, into which the gravel mixture would be poured. Rebar was run down the middle to reinforce the wall. Then, the gravel was mixed with 10% cement, with varying pigment amounts to achieve the colored layers, as well as a small amount of water to create the particular rammed-earth formula.
After the appropriate mixture was achieved, it was fed from an auger-style mixer to a truck-mounted conveyor, or telebelt, designed to place concrete and other materials in hard-to-reach or elevated locations. From there, the mixture was poured into the forms. For safety reasons, the team worked on four feet of wall at a time, Jessop said.
“Every layer that you see was placed and compacted individually. First it’s placed in roughly 12-inch loose layers of the consistency of a good road base,” Jessop said. After that the mixture was tightly compacted, or rammed, into the final eight-inch layer.
The construction of the library’s rammed-earth walls took a 15-man crew just over three months and about 12,000 man hours to complete, Jessop said. Two million pounds of material were used in the process.
When Winn talks about the role the local company he founded in 1981 played in building the centerpiece design element of the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library, he calls the opportunity “a privilege.”
Jenn Carroll, the library’s manager of sustainability, called the team from Winn Construction “really wise” in the way they approached the daunting job.
Anna Paige / The Forum
“From the owner perspective, it’s really important to note that the willingness of Willie and his team to take on this piece of the project,” Carroll said. “We’re incredibly grateful because this is such a big piece of what we’re doing, and they were willing to learn this new craft. When we first peeled the forms back, I think for all of us there was some celebration because it’s just stunning and it’s pretty special that we can have a local artisan do this and not have to hire out outside of our area.”
While the wall is not a structural element of the building, it serves an important role for sustainability, Carroll said.
“It’s going to help with our energy, retaining heat in the winter, keep the space cool in the summer, helping with humidity and moisture in the air,” Carroll said. “Because it is a kind of porous element, indoor air quality will be improved by it. So while it has some aesthetic values, there’s a lot more purpose behind the behind the wall itself.”
“People are going to walk in that lobby and it’s going to be the showstopper,” Carroll said.
New ballot measure guide to be mailed to North Dakota voters ahead of election
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BISMARCK (North Dakota Monitor) — A federal district court judge indicated he will nullify a nearly $28 million judgment against the federal government related to costs North Dakota incurred during the Dakota Access Pipeline protests so the parties can reach a settlement.
North Dakota is still set to receive a payment Attorney General Drew Wrigley described as satisfactory, but attorneys would not disclose the amount during a Friday hearing.
Attorneys for the United States and North Dakota said the settlement would allow the parties to avoid litigating the case in appeals court,putting the nearly seven-year-old lawsuit to rest.
“We’re hoping we really don’t need to fight any further,” Department of Justice attorney Jonathan Guynn said during the hearing.
The lawsuit, filed in 2019, concerns demonstrations against the construction of the crude oil pipeline, also known as DAPL, that took place in rural south-central North Dakota in 2016 and 2017.
North Dakota claims the federal government caused the protests to grow in size and intensity by unlawfully allowing demonstrators to camp on federal land. The state says it had to pay millions of dollars on policing and cleaning up the encampments as a result. The United States denies the state’s allegations.
North Dakota U.S. District Court Judge Daniel Traynor in April 2025 sided with the state and ordered the executive branch to pay North Dakota the $28 million sum, a decision the U.S. Department of Justice later appealed to the 8th Circuit.
If the settlement moves forward, North Dakota would receive a “substantial monetary payment” from the United States, attorneys said Friday. As a condition of the agreement, the Department of Justice wants Traynor’s judgment and three other orders in which he ruled against the United States to be voided. That includes the court’s 120-page ruling from April 2025.
Both parties said Friday that having the rulings nullified wouldn’t have a significant negative impact on the public, since the documents could still be cited even if they no longer hold the weight of court orders.
At the same time, Guynn said the Department of Justice wants the orders vacated because it doesn’t want the legal conclusions Traynor made to influence the outcome of future lawsuits.
“The downstream consequences of keeping these on the books is troublesome for the United States,” he said during the hearing. If Traynor does not agree to axe the rulings, the United States would likely no longer be willing to settle and move forward with its appeal instead, Guynn added.
Traynor’s orders make findings about the federal government’s responsibility under the Federal Tort Claims Act — the law North Dakota filed the suit under — which the state noted previously in court filings “could have utility holding the federal government to account” in the future.
Still, attorneys for the state said they believe this trade-off is outweighed by the time and money the public would save by not going through the appeals process. North Dakota would also avoid the risk of having Traynor’s judgment overturned by higher courts.
Wrigley said the settlement will be made public once it’s finalized.
The United States’ appeal of Traynor’s decision has been on hold since last summer, when the state and federal government informed the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals they had started settlement negotiations and wished to pause the case.
The 8th Circuit will have to first send the case back to Traynor before he could grant the parties’ requests.
The case went to trial in Bismarck in early 2024. During the four-week trial, the court heard from witnesses including former governors Doug Burgum and Jack Dalrymple, Native activists, federal officials and law enforcement.
The Dakota Access Pipeline carries crude oil from northwest North Dakota to Illinois. It crosses the Missouri River just north of the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation, which prompted the tribe to begin protesting the pipeline on the grounds that it poses a threat to its water supply and sovereignty.
North Dakota’s lawsuit originally requested $38 million in damages from the federal government. Traynor ordered the executive branch to pay $28 million since the U.S. Department of Justice previously gave the state $10 million as compensation for costs it spent related to the protests.
BISMARCK, N.D. (KFYR) – North Dakota leaders unveiled an initiative aimed at getting more oil out of the Bakken, using enhanced oil recovery and CO₂.
Senator John Hoeven said the effort is getting a boost from $36 million from the Department of Energy for “Crack the Code 2.0,” a $157 million initiative with state and industry funding.
Hoeven said the goal is to use CO₂ for enhanced oil recovery, calling it “an important, usable, valuable commodity” and saying, “We’re linking our coal plants with our oil and gas producing companies to do it.”
Funding will be used to develop technology to make enhanced oil recovery profitable and viable, and then implement it in North Dakota oil fields in a number of pilot projects.
Hoeven said current recovery rates in the Bakken are limited.
“We’re only producing about 10 to 12% of the oil out of that shale,” he said, “But with EOR, advanced oil recovery techniques, we can double it. We can take it from 10 to 12% up to 25% or better.”
Hoeven said the effort is also tied to electricity demand, saying North Dakota will “produce more electricity for a company that wants to do AI, that wants to do data centers, needs more and more electricity,” and that “it isn’t just about oil and gas.”
North Dakota Petroleum Council President Ron Ness said the pilot projects are expected to start soon.
“We hope to see these pilots putting their technologies into the ground sometime late this year, first quarter of next year,” said Ness.
“So I would expect by this time next year, we’re going to maybe potentially begin to see what are some of the results early on,” Ness added. “And again, this is going to take multiple, multiple swings at this thing. It’s not going to just happen. If it was easy, we’d be doing it. Nobody’s done it anywhere in the world. This is where we’re going to crack the code.”
Copyright 2026 KFYR. All rights reserved.
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