Chapel in the Badlands

The small brick Saint Mary’s church in Medora may look simple, but its story is anything but. It is one of North Dakota’s most unique and historic Catholic sites and receives many visitors from North Dakota and around the world each year.

This treasure of North Dakota Catholic heritage is the oldest Catholic church still in use in the state, it was commissioned by North Dakota’s only aristocratic family, and it has a unique connection to Charles de Foucauld, one of the Church’s newest canonized saints.
 
Fascinating history

The town of Medora was founded in 1883 by Antoine Vallombrosa, the Marquis de Mores, an eccentric French nobleman with a dream of building a flourishing city on the edge of the cattle range. His plan to send refrigerated beef direct to market by railroad, though ahead of its time, was short-lived. But in the four years that he and his wife Medora Von Hoffman (the town’s namesake) spent in Dakota Territory, they left an indelible mark. Today, Medora is one of North Dakota’s top tourist attractions and the gateway to Theodore Roosevelt National Park, named for the future president who lived and ranched in the area alongside the Marquis.

Saint Mary’s Church is one example of that indelible mark. The Marquis and the Marquise (Medora Von Hoffman’s noble title) were Catholic. The Marquise saw to it that a Catholic church was established in the fledgling town, paying for its construction with her own money. 

“That little church is really [a] testimony to her,” says Ed Sahlstrom, a local history expert who served as assistant site supervisor at the Chateau De Mores State Historic Site. “She is for the people. They need a church, they need schools and so on. She is responsible for bringing that to civilize this town.”

The Marquise’s generosity also extended to St. Mary’s church in Bismarck. After the death of her husband in 1896, she paid for a large stained-glass window depicting Our Lady in his honor. That stained-glass window remains in a prominent place today at the Pro-Cathedral of St. Mary above the original main entrance.

Builders broke ground on St. Mary’s—the brick structure first called Athenias Chapel named after the Marquise’s daughter—in September 1884. The first Mass was celebrated on All Souls’ Day that year. The first baptism and marriage took place the following month. Today visitors can still see the original church structure, altar and first two rows of pews from the 1880s. Mass was celebrated regularly, though not weekly, by Fr. Martin Schmitt, a Benedictine from St. John’s Abbey in Minnesota. He served as missionary priest in the tiny frontier towns that had popped up along the newly-constructed portion of the Northern Pacific Railroad west of Bismarck. When the church was constructed, it also briefly doubled as the town’s first school and the Marquise paid the teacher’s salary. The city of Medora, with its growing population and brand-new meatpacking plant, was one of the most important missions in the region.

The Marquis and Marquise worked hard to bring civilization and prosperity, but life on the frontier was still rough-and-tumble. It was certainly a far cry from their wealthy upbringings in France and New York City. Legend has it that local troublemaker Mike “Bad Man” Finnegan once took target practice at the windows of St. Mary’s. Father Raymond Backes, pastor of St. Mary’s in the 1960s and author of a booklet on the church’s history, asked one early inhabitant about the faith life of the area. “Religion?” he replied. “I s’pose there wasn’t very much of it!” A 1880s newspaper editor Arthur Packard, though, wrote that Medora’s churches were well attended.

Saintly connection
            
The Marquis and Marquise knew Theodore Roosevelt and invited him to dine with them in their grand hilltop hunting lodge, the “Chateau de Mores,” on several occasions. While Roosevelt is certainly the most famous figure associated with Medora, he was not the only famous personal contact of the Marquis. While in military school as a young man in Saumur, France, the Marquis was the roommate and best friend of St. Charles de Foucauld. A humble hero of the faith canonized by Pope Francis in May 2022, St. Charles went on to spend much of his life as a hermit in Nazareth and the Sahara Desert.

The Marquis and Charles were both lively personalities who shared a flare for adventure. As North Dakota historian, the late Jerome Tweton, explained in the biography of the Marquis, they fenced, hosted grand parties lasting late into the night and occasionally journeyed to Paris by dropping from a bridge onto the top of train cars. While the Marquis was a loyal Catholic, Charles abandoned the faith at a young age and became an atheist. The two often debated and discussed philosophy.

When the Marquis began his business ventures in Dakota Territory, Charles considered joining him. He decided instead to go on a French espionage mission in Morocco. While there, he was impressed by the devotion the Muslims had to their religion. It caused him to think more deeply about the Catholic faith he had left behind. During a conversation with a priest at St. Augustine Church in Paris at the age of 28, he had a profound conversion experience.

He later wrote that, “as soon as I came to believe that there is a God, I understood that I could not do otherwise than live only for him.”

He dedicated himself to a radical life of poverty, service and prayer. He entered the Trappists and then, motivated by a deep desire to imitate the simple life of Christ in the Holy Land, worked as a servant at a convent in Nazareth. The day before taking his vows as a Trappist, he sent a letter to the Marquis, writing, “I pray from afar for all those I love. I pray for you.” In 1901, he moved to the Sahara Desert in Algeria, to be “where the souls are in greatest need.” He eventually settled near the remote desert town of Tamanrasset, where he lived as a hermit, evangelizing and serving the local Tuareg people. He was killed there in 1916 by bandits and is recognized as a martyr for the faith.

A small plaque honoring St. Charles’ life hangs in St. Mary’s Church today. While he never visited Medora, the town’s founder played a major role in his life and his decision not to join the Marquis in Dakota was a turning point in his life. Twenty years before St. Charles’ death, the Marquis too was killed in the Sahara Desert while on expedition in Tunisia.

The Marquis and his early death were often on Charles’ mind. “This dear Morès, whom I think about and pray for every day, is helping me,” he wrote in a 1903 letter. “In heaven, at the heart of eternity, the immense charity in which he is immersed, he has nothing but prayer and love for those Muslims who shed his blood and who will probably shed mine.”
 
Spiritual home for travelers

The Marquis and Marquise were only in Medora for the first two years of the now nearly 140-year history of the church. For most of that history, St. Mary’s served as the parish of a sleepy western boom-to-bust town. Masses were held infrequently. Today, it welcomes thousands of tourists each summer and travelers from around the country and the world sign its guestbook in a tiny vestibule in the back of church.

Medora experienced a boom again in the 1960s thanks to the efforts of Bismarck businessman Harold Schafer. He invested in the town’s revitalization and in 1965 established the famous nightly Medora Musical in an outdoor amphitheater. By the 1980s, St. Mary’s Church—with an occupancy of about 50—was overflowing to the point that attendees crowded outside and peered through the windows at each of its three Sunday Masses. Today, St. Mary’s is part of a tri-parish cluster with St. Bernard in Belfield and St. Mary in South Heart. The one weekly Mass in Medora—a Saturday vigil—is held in the original church only in May and October. During the summer tourist season, Mass is held at the town community center’s theater. In the winter, the tri-parish offers Masses only at its churches in Belfield and South Heart.

The original church building remains open throughout the summer, and many people visit each day to spend time in prayer before the tabernacle.

“It's just a very intimate, quiet setting [where] you can feel God's presence anytime you walk in the front doors,” said parishioner Clarence Sitter, CEO of the Theodore Roosevelt Medora Foundation. “You can feel like you went back in time to what it was like in the late 1800s, early 1900s. You get a perspective of how our faith is timeless.”

Sitter and his family have been active members of the parish community since 2012, assisting with altar serving, lectoring and ushering. Today, only 10 families belong to St. Mary’s. In summer, though, about 100 attend Mass each weekend.

“It's just a privilege to serve people and provide an opportunity for them to worship on vacation,” he said. “God doesn't take vacations and so [for] those of us who really want to live out our faith, it's nice to be able to have that opportunity.”

Each year, roughly 200,000 people visit Medora— population 155—for the beauty of the Badlands, the history of Theodore Roosevelt and the Marquis de Mores, and the fun to be had at the musical, the waterpark and the golf course. A visit to St. Mary’s Church, though, can turn a vacation to Medora into a pilgrimage. 

Humble St. Mary’s is a treasure of North Dakota’s Catholic heritage, hearkening back to a time when the Gospel was still new in the state.
            
“[The] church is really representative—throughout the prairie of North Dakota—of how these people had faith and built their churches,” said Fr. Shane Campbell, pastor of the tri-parish cluster that includes St. Mary’s in Medora. “In most of the towns across the state [and] across the Midwest, [the church] was one of the first things that they wanted to [build].”
            
A visit to Saint Mary’s is also a unique opportunity to honor St. Charles de Foucauld. Although he was from France and his abandonment to God’s will took him to faraway places like the Holy Land and the Sahara, his life was touched, in a small but significant way, by little Medora.
             
Little St. Mary’s—the quiet, peaceful home of the Blessed Sacrament in the wide wilderness of buttes and valleys—continues to touch the lives of many from far and wide today.