St. Mary's Catholic Church
4th St. and 3rd Ave., Medora, NDThe significance of St. Mary's derives from its status as the oldest Catholic church still in use in the state of North Dakota; the effective simplicity of its architectural design; and its association with the family of the Marquis de Mores (1858-1896), a French nobleman who founded the town in which the church is located.
Medora on the Little Missouri River in the Dakota Badlands was laid out in 1883 by the Marquis as headquarters for his commercial scheme of slaughtering cattle on the range and shipping the meat to consumers in refrigerated railroad cars. The town quickly prospered and by 1884 had acquired 251 permanent settlers, one of whom was Peter Book, a builder who also owned a local brickyard. In July, 1884, Book was awarded the contract for St. Mary's by Medora, Marquise de Mores, who built the church for the town which was her namesake. Construction progressed rapidly, with the completed edifice being blessed on November 2, 1884, by Father Martin Schmitt, priest of Mandan parish and its missions. The first baptism and the first marriage in the new church both took place on December 30, 1884, with the groom, carpenter Jim Butler, furnishing pews for the building during the following year. In the early months of its existence, the church was also the setting for a school taught by a Miss Finger, who came from South Heart.
In 1886 the Marquis de Mores and his family departed Medora following the collapse of his meat-packing venture, which occurred chiefly for two reasons: an Eastern taste for corn-fed rather than range-fed cattle and a price war initiated by competing packers. The town of Medora, being almost entirely dependent economically on the de Mores enterprise, entered a decline which lasted for nearly a century.
St. Mary's passed to the care of the resident pastor of St. Patrick's Catholic Church, Dickinson, in 1887. During the present century, responsibility for it has been assumed successively by pastors at Beach, Belfield, South Heart, and Sentinel Butte. The patron of the church has also changed through the years: Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary (1890s); Sacred Heart (1896-ca. 1920); St. Mary's (officially, 1938-present). The donation of St. Mary's to the community of Medora was reaffirmed in 1920 by Louis and Paul Manca de Vallombrosa, sons of the Marquis and the Marquise de Mores; a legal instrument of the donation was drawn up in 1925.
During the mid-1960s, Medora underwent a tourist boom generated by restoration and promotional activities of the Gold Seal Company of Bismarck, which capitalized on the locale's colorful cattle-town origins. St. Mary's single Sunday service consequently became hopelessly inadequate, and eventually three weekend services during the summer months were instituted. Currently, hundreds of visitors are served each week during the tourist season, although the permanent congregation of the "Chapel in the Badlands" remains small.
Listed in National Register of Historic Places in 1977.
The National Register of Historic Places is the official list of the Nation’s historic places worthy of preservation. Authorized by the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966, the National Park Service’s National Register of Historic Places is part of a national program to coordinate and support public and private efforts to identify, evaluate, and protect America’s historic and archeological resources.