North Dakota
Work on the Theodore Roosevelt National Park loop has stopped for the winter, but the finish line is in sight
MEDORA, N.D. — Theodore Roosevelt National Park visitors will have to wait a few more months to enjoy the south unit’s full loop, as construction on a stretch of roadway that collapsed five years ago has halted for the winter.
Winter has brought a drop in temperature, which has halted the Scenic Loop Drive reconstruction project for the season, said Maureen McGee-Ballinger, deputy superintendent and chief for interpretation and education at the park. Park officials had hoped that the weather would have cooperated and allowed construction crews to finish work on the nearly six-mile stretch of road by November.
“We anticipate, because it is pretty close to being done, that it’s going to be done by this coming summer,” she said Thursday. “We’ll let everyone know. We’ll have a nice, big celebration.”
It’s unclear how much the construction project will cost, though U.S. Sens. John Hoeven and Kevin Cramer, two Republicans from North Dakota, helped secure more than $47 million in federal funding for road repairs on the scenic loop.
A series of landslides, poor road subgrade material and ineffective drainage have plagued the Scenic Loop Drive for years, the park said. A four-mile stretch of the road slid down a hill in 2019.
Though some parts of the road didn’t fully collapse, pictures show deep fissures in the asphalt.
The park closed its south unit loop between mile marker 22 and 28, preventing visitors from driving the full 36-mile loop for five years. The closed portion has several popular attractions in the south-central part of the park, including the Ridgeline Trail, the Badlands Outlook and Scoria Point.
Construction began in 2022.
The project is the first major rehabilitation job done to the drive in 20 years, according to the park. The goal is to stabilize the road to make it more sustainable, according to project documents.
The construction also gave the park an opportunity to expand parking at several outlook and trail locations, McGee-Ballinger said.
That will include Scoria Point, which only had a few parking spots before the collapse. The parking area there will be widened so more people can stop to enjoy the outlook, McGee-Ballinger said.
“It’s actually going to make it more accessible than before it was closed,” she said.
The Theodore Roosevelt National Park South Unit is accessible through Medora, which is about 35 miles west of Dickinson. Its north unit is about 70 miles northwest of Dickinson.
The park also has the Elkhorn Ranch Unit between the south and north units. That’s where President Theodore Roosevelt, the park’s namesake, built a ranch for himself after his wife and mother died. Theodore Roosevelt National Park is the only one named after a president.
Between 750,000 and 800,000 people visit Theodore Roosevelt National Park each year.
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.”
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