The vast open spaces and distant horizons are breathtaking, even frightening to some people from big cities. Put a brick under the bottom left corner of a sheet of plywood, and you will have some idea of what North Dakota is like. It is not perfectly flat, however. The state s most populated region is the fertile Red River Valley, the bed of an Ice Age lake that runs along the North Dakota-Minnesota border. To the west is the Drift Prairie Region, a glaciated region of rolling hills and rich soils.
Grasses are tall or short, depending on the availability of moisture.
Glaciers never covered North Dakota s southwest corner, a more rugged land with buttes, bluffs, breaks, and badlands. Relatively dry, this is short grass country. Theodore Roosevelt National Park commemorates our most adventurous president s ranch in the Little Missouri Badlands. The bones of a Tyrannosaurus protrude out of an earthen bank riddled with holes dug by burrowing mammals. But their enormous bones are very common.