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  The 128-acre Chateau de Mores State Historic Site is comprised of three separate parts: The Chateau de Mores (1/8 mile west and 1/8 miles south of Medora), Chimney Park (west edge of Medora), and de Mores Memorial Park (downtown Medora). [How to get there (map).]

The Chateau de Mores State Historic Site interprets the life of the Marquis de Mores. A French aristocrat with an entrepreneurial spirit common during this era, the Marquis came to Dakota Territory in 1883 to find fortune in the cattle industry. He planned to slaughter range cattle at Medora, ship dressed meat east in refrigerated rail cars, and provide urban consumers with a better quality meat product.

The Marquis invested heavily in his dream. He built a meat-packing plant, bought cattle and land, and employed cowboys and workers. For three years Medora hummed with activity; the de Mores family built houses, businesses, and a Catholic church. The Marquis’s many enterprises included cattle ranches, sheep ranches, and the Medora-Deadwood Stagecoach line.

When the Marquis’s meat-packing scheme collapsed in 1886, his commercial empire did as well. His dreams, however, created a romantic legacy that lives on in western North Dakota.

Still standing in the town he named for his wife is the home he built for his in-laws, the wealthy von Hoffmans from New York, and a Catholic church his wife had constructed. De Mores Memorial Park and a statue of the Marquis also recall the de Mores presence. The meat-packing plant burned in 1907; its brick chimney still stands east of the Little Missouri River at what is now Chimney Park.

The Marquis’ most striking legacy is the rustic but aristocratic 26-room home that his neighbors dubbed "the chateau." Overlooking his town and enterprises, the frame home was ready for Medora Von Hoffman's arrival in spring 1884. Rich furnishings, oriental carpets, and fine accoutrements accommodated the family and their wealthy guests, including Theodore Roosevelt. The couple’s two children, Athenais, and Louis, as well as nurses, maids, and other domestic help, accompanied them to Medora. For three years, the family occupied the home seasonally, returning to New York during the winters. Among their pastimes were hunting, music, and art, common diversions of nineteenth-century aristocrats. Both Medora and the Marquis were skilled hunters.

The ruins of the Marquis’s meat-packing plant, situated on the west edge of Medora, are called Chimney Park. The packing plant was part of the Marquis’s most ambitious project: to supply high-quality meat to the nations consumers quickly and economically by processing it locally and shipping it to market. With the help of his father-in-law, Baron Von Hoffman, the Marquis incorporated the Northern Pacific Refrigerator Car Company in April 1883. Although the plant could process 150 beef carcasses per day, finding cattle that were fit to butcher was difficult, due to the ongoing drought in the badlands. The plant closed in November 1886, a failure due to fierce competition from major Chicago-based packers, the effects of bad weather and drought, and the Marquis’s inexperience in business.

When the Marquis left Medora in 1886, the plant was abandoned. The building burned in 1907. A tall, native-brick chimney still stands in silent tribute to this early attempt to capitalize on the meat-packing business.

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