Expert short-term rental marketing to grow your bookings and nightly rate in Medora, North Dakota, USA.
* Market averages. Properties marketed by Cavmir typically exceed these figures by 25–45%. Data sourced from AirDNA, STR market reports, and Cavmir internal analytics.
Medora is a town of a few hundred people in the North Dakota badlands, sitting in a bend of the Little Missouri River at the south entrance of Theodore Roosevelt National Park. It was founded in 1883 by a French nobleman, the Marquis de Morès, who named it after his wife and built a meat-packing plant on the theory that cattle should be slaughtered on the plains rather than shipped east. The scheme failed. His twenty-six-room chateau is still there and open to visitors. The same year, a twenty-four-year-old Theodore Roosevelt arrived to hunt bison, bought into two ranches, and returned after the deaths of his wife and mother to spend the better part of two years here — an experience he credited with making him. The park named for him is the reason people come: badlands, bison, wild horses, and the Maah Daah Hey Trail running north through a hundred-plus miles of it. The Medora Musical plays in an outdoor amphitheatre carved into a bluff every summer night. It is a hundred-day town, and it is regulated far more tightly than its size suggests.
Medora and the surrounding badlands are governed by Billings County Zoning Ordinance section 6.18, with amendments recommended by Planning and Zoning on 25 January 2024 and approved by the Board of County Commissioners on 6 February 2024. Short-term rentals are a conditionally permitted use in Agricultural, Residential and Recreational districts, meaning every one requires a Conditional Use Permit — reviewed by the Zoning Director, then a public hearing before the Zoning Board, with final action by the County Commission. The annual permit fee is one thousand dollars for Tier I and one thousand five hundred for Tier II, non-refundable. Occupancy is three per bedroom plus one, capped at sixteen: a one-bedroom permits four, two permits seven, three permits ten, four permits thirteen, five permits sixteen. More than five bedrooms or more than sixteen occupants is a hotel and is not allowed in Residential districts. Occupancies above ten require a North Dakota Health and Human Services Food and Lodging licence. Signage is not allowed. Fire pits, charcoal grills, wood stoves and fireworks are prohibited. And the permit does not run with the land — on sale, the seller must cease operating and the buyer may reapply.
Nearby Markets: Black Hills | Cody | West Yellowstone
A few of the visual fingerprints we lean into when we shoot, brand and market a Medora property — courtesy of the open Wikimedia Commons archive.
Cavmir markets Medora properties around the park and the hundred days, because there is no version of this market that pretends otherwise. We open next summer's calendar early, because a Theodore Roosevelt National Park trip is planned months ahead and the property that is bookable in January takes reservations the property waiting until May never sees. We photograph the badlands light, which in the last hour of the day is genuinely extraordinary and which almost every listing here misses by shooting at noon. We write the park properly — the scenic loop, the Painted Canyon overlook, the wild horses, the Maah Daah Hey — and we write the Medora Musical, because guests planning a park visit rarely know there is a show every night. Because signage is prohibited here, arrival instructions have to be genuinely good, and we write them that way. We build a direct booking site so returning guests come back to you directly, and keep an email list warm through a very long winter. We help position and market your property. We never manage it or touch your keys.
Medora was founded in 1883 by Antoine-Amédée-Marie-Vincent Manca de Vallombrosa, the Marquis de Morès, a French nobleman who arrived in the Dakota badlands with his American wife's family money and a business plan. The plan was to slaughter cattle where they were raised rather than ship them live to Chicago, refrigerate the beef and send it east by rail. He built a packing plant, a town, and a twenty-six-room house on a bluff above the Little Missouri, and named the town after his wife, Medora von Hoffman. The venture failed within a few years. The chateau is still standing and open to visitors, which makes it one of the more unusual surviving artefacts of the open-range era.
The same September, a twenty-four-year-old New York assemblyman named Theodore Roosevelt got off the train to hunt bison and left having bought into the Maltese Cross Ranch. The following February his wife and his mother died on the same day, and he came back to the badlands and stayed for much of the next two years, running cattle at the Elkhorn Ranch north of town, serving as a deputy sheriff, and by his own later account becoming the person who could go on to be president. He wrote that he would never have been president had it not been for his experience in North Dakota.
Theodore Roosevelt National Park was established in its current form in 1978, protecting badlands along the Little Missouri in three units, with the South Unit entrance at Medora. Bison, wild horses, elk and prairie dogs are all present and visible from the scenic loop.
The Medora Musical has played in the Burning Hills Amphitheatre, cut into a bluff outside town, every summer night since the 1960s. And the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library is being built on the bluff above the town, which is the largest change to Medora's prospects in a century.
Medora is a hundred-day town and pricing it honestly means accepting that.
The season runs roughly from Memorial Day to mid-September, with July and early August the peak. The Medora Musical runs nightly through the summer, the park is fully accessible, and the town operates at full capacity. Outside that window, the town largely closes: the musical stops, most businesses shut, and the badlands in a North Dakota February are for a very small and specialised audience.
Within the season, demand is driven by the park and by the musical, and both are planned in advance. Theodore Roosevelt National Park is not a spontaneous destination — visitors are usually on a longer route between the Black Hills, Yellowstone or a Montana trip — which means booking windows are long and the property that opens next summer's calendar in January captures reservations that a property waiting until May never sees.
Occupancy is capped by the county's formula rather than by your furniture, and the tiers are specific: a one-bedroom permits four occupants, two permits seven, three permits ten, four permits thirteen and five permits sixteen. Peak revenue is a direct function of which tier you are in, and above ten occupants you need a state lodging licence as well.
The permit fee — a thousand dollars for Tier I, fifteen hundred for Tier II, annually and non-refundable — is a fixed cost that has to be earned back inside a hundred days. That single fact should shape your rate strategy more than anything else. Discounting into a short season with a four-figure fixed cost attached is how owners here lose money.
Memorial Day to mid-September is the season, with July and early August the peak and the Medora Musical running nightly throughout. Late May and September are the shoulder weeks, with the park open, better light and thinner crowds. From October the town largely closes: the musical ends, most businesses shut for the winter, and demand falls to a very small trickle of park visitors and hunters. Winter in the badlands is genuinely severe. This is the shortest and most sharply defined season of any market in this wave — roughly a hundred good days carrying a twelve-month cost base.
Medora and the surrounding badlands are among the most tightly regulated short-term rental markets in this wave, which almost nobody expects from a town of a few hundred people.
Billings County Zoning Ordinance section 6.18 governs short-term rentals. The amendments were recommended for approval by the Planning and Zoning Commission on 25 January 2024 and approved by the Board of County Commissioners on 6 February 2024.
Short-term rentals are a conditionally permitted use in Agricultural, Residential and Recreational zoning districts, which means every one requires a Conditional Use Permit. The process runs through the Zoning Director, then a public hearing before the Zoning Board, with final action by the County Commission. The annual permit fee is one thousand dollars for Tier I and one thousand five hundred dollars for Tier II, and no portion is refundable if the permit is denied or if operation stops for any reason.
Occupancy is three people per bedroom plus one additional person, capped at sixteen, with published tiers: one bedroom permits four, two permits seven, three permits ten, four permits thirteen and five permits sixteen. Occupancy may be reduced based on available parking. More than five bedrooms or more than sixteen occupants is a hotel and is not allowed in Residential districts. Occupancies above ten and up to sixteen must be licensed by the North Dakota Department of Health and Human Services Division of Food and Lodging — that is the Tier I / Tier II boundary.
The detailed requirements are unusually specific. Parking is one space per bedroom, contained on site; on-street parking on public or private rights of way is not allowed. Septic systems must be sized to the bedroom count and occupancy and are inspected by the Southwest District Health Unit at least once every three years. Signage is not allowed. Fireplaces, fire pits, charcoal grills, wood-burning stoves and other outdoor facilities that could throw embers are prohibited, as are fireworks; compressed gas and pellet grills may be allowed with proper clearance. Garbage must be fully enclosed in designated containers. Applications must identify every hosting platform, website and media source where the rental is advertised, with links.
Two provisions carry real financial weight. Short-term rentals that are not a primary residence are classified as commercial for property tax purposes, and it is on the applicant to prove primary residency. And the Conditional Use Permit does not run with the land: on sale or transfer, the seller must cease operating the short-term rental, and a future owner may reapply. Permits expire one year from issuance and renew annually, and the county may inspect at any reasonable time with notice.
Short-term rentals may not make up more than 40% of the total housing units in a major subdivision or residential neighbourhood under county zoning authority, and in platted major subdivisions recorded covenants must allow and self-regulate the use.
North Dakota has no statewide short-term rental permit; the state applies 5% sales tax to stays under thirty days. The City of Medora also has its own ordinances covering zoning and business licences — confirm those with the city separately.
Open next summer's calendar in January. In a hundred-day market where visitors are planning a multi-park route months ahead, this is the highest-value operational habit available and most owners here do not do it.
Write arrival instructions as though the guest will find nothing, because signage is prohibited. No sign on the property, no marker, nothing. Photographs of the approach, of the turn, of the door, plus what3words or precise coordinates and a description of what the building looks like. A guest circling a badlands road at dusk is a guest writing a review.
Tell guests plainly what they cannot do. No fire pits, no charcoal grills, no wood stoves, no fireworks. People come to the badlands expecting a fire under the stars, and finding out on arrival is a bad moment. Say it in advance, explain that propane and pellet grills may be permitted, and frame it as the fire-risk reality of a grassland landscape rather than an arbitrary rule.
Publish your permitted occupancy from the tier table. Four, seven, ten, thirteen, sixteen. There is no discretion in it, and advertising a headcount the county has not permitted generates enquiries you must decline.
Photograph the last hour of light. Badlands light in the evening is genuinely extraordinary and almost every listing here shoots at midday, when the same landscape looks flat and grey.
Sell the Medora Musical. It runs every night through the summer in an amphitheatre cut into a bluff, and visitors planning a national park trip routinely do not know it exists. It converts a one-night park stop into two.
Name the park properly. The scenic loop, Painted Canyon Overlook off the interstate, the wild horses, the prairie dog towns, the Maah Daah Hey Trail. Guests are building an itinerary; do the work for them.
A hundred-day season against a twelve-month cost base including a four-figure annual permit fee is the fundamental challenge, and it is arithmetic rather than a marketing problem.
The permit not running with the land is the second. A buyer inherits nothing, must reapply, and must go through a public hearing and a County Commission decision to do so. That is real transaction risk and it should be understood before an offer, not after.
The commercial property tax classification for non-primary-residence rentals is a genuine cost that owners frequently discover late.
The prohibitions on signage and on any open fire are operationally awkward in ways that need active management rather than a line in the house rules.
And the market is very small. A few hundred residents, a park gateway, and a lodging sector in which the Theodore Roosevelt Medora Foundation is a substantial presence. There is not much room, which is part of why the county regulates as tightly as it does.
Proof of insurance is a Conditional Use Permit requirement in Billings County, so this is a compliance matter before it is a prudential one. Get the cover in place before you apply.
The dominant physical exposures are weather and cold. North Dakota winters are severe, and a property empty from October to May needs its freeze protection taken seriously — winterisation, monitoring, and a carrier who understands extended vacancy in a hundred-day market. A burst pipe discovered in April in a town where contractors are scarce is expensive and slow.
Wind and hail are routine claims on the northern plains, and roof age drives premium and settlement.
Grassland fire risk is the reason the county prohibits fire pits, charcoal grills and wood stoves outright, and your insurer will take the same view. Complying properly is both a permit condition and an underwriting one.
Short-term rental use must be disclosed. Liability should reflect guests unfamiliar with badlands terrain, wildlife including bison, and long distances to emergency services.
Septic is a regulated element here, inspected by the Southwest District Health Unit at least every three years, and failures are worth understanding in coverage terms.
Work with a broker who writes short-term rental policies in North Dakota and understands a seasonal, remote property.
North Dakota has no statewide short-term rental permit, and its tax treatment is comparatively simple relative to the county's regulatory intensity.
North Dakota applies 5% state sales tax to short-term rental accommodation, defined for tax purposes as stays of fewer than thirty consecutive days. Operators must register with the North Dakota Office of the State Tax Commissioner to collect and remit. Local city and county lodging taxes may apply on top; confirm the position for Medora and Billings County with the city auditor and the county rather than assuming.
The Conditional Use Permit application also requires proof of a North Dakota Sales and Use Tax permit and a copy of North Dakota business registration, so the tax registration is a precondition of the permit rather than a follow-up task.
The provision with the largest financial effect is not a lodging tax at all. Under section 6.18, short-term rentals that are not a primary residence are classified as commercial for property tax purposes, and the burden is on the applicant to prove primary residency. For a non-resident owner, that reclassification is a material annual cost and it should be modelled before purchase, not discovered afterwards.
Booking platforms collect and remit some components in North Dakota, but registration remains your obligation and direct bookings are generally handled entirely by you.
Confirm current rates and obligations with the North Dakota Office of the State Tax Commissioner, the City of Medora and Billings County, and speak to your accountant about the commercial classification and the treatment of the income.
Financing a short-term rental in Medora involves a risk that very few markets present so starkly: the permit dies at closing.
Under Billings County section 6.18, a Conditional Use Permit for a short-term rental does not run with the land. On sale or transfer the seller must cease operating, and the buyer may reapply — through the Zoning Director, a public hearing before the Zoning Board and a decision by the County Commission. A seller's rental history is therefore not an asset a buyer acquires, and any lender relying on projected short-term rental income is relying on a permission that does not yet exist and is discretionary.
Treat obtaining the permit as a condition to be understood before an offer, and be candid with your lender about it. Do not let an appraisal lean on rental comparables for a property whose rental rights have to be applied for afresh.
Also model the real costs: a thousand or fifteen hundred dollar annual permit fee, commercial property tax classification if the property is not your primary residence, septic compliance, and one on-site parking space per bedroom which may require work.
Beyond that, a hundred-day income season should be presented honestly rather than annualised, appraisal comparables in a very small market are thin, and rural water, septic, access and winter insurability all raise underwriting questions.
This is general information rather than financial advice — confirm the specifics with your mortgage broker, your accountant and Billings County Planning and Zoning.
The largest change to Medora's prospects in a century is being built on the bluff above the town. The Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library is a major institution in a place that has not had one, and a presidential library at a national park gateway is the kind of anchor that can extend a season and raise visitation durably. Owners here should be following its programming and opening calendar closely, because it is the single most plausible mechanism by which Medora becomes something more than a hundred-day town.
The regulatory direction is already tight and shows no sign of loosening. Section 6.18 was amended as recently as February 2024, the 40% neighbourhood ceiling gives the county an explicit tool to limit numbers, and the ordinance states plainly that the county may limit short-term rental numbers to sustain permanent housing and will monitor and impose limits as needed. Assume it gets tighter rather than looser.
The non-transferable permit is the structural fact that will shape values here. Every sale requires a fresh discretionary approval, which introduces friction into transactions and means an operating permit has real scarcity value to whoever holds it.
On demand, Theodore Roosevelt National Park remains one of the least-visited parks with genuinely first-rate scenery, wild horses and bison, and a story attached to it that no other park can claim. As the better-known parks get more crowded and more reservation-managed, an uncrowded badlands alternative with a presidential library attached becomes a stronger proposition rather than a weaker one.
Medora is a town of a few hundred people at the edge of the badlands, and it has more genuine history per square foot than places a hundred times the size. A French marquis built a meat-packing plant and a twenty-six-room chateau here in 1883 on a theory about refrigerated railcars, went broke, and left the house standing. The same autumn a twenty-four-year-old Theodore Roosevelt got off the train to shoot a bison and ended up spending two years running cattle after his wife and mother died on the same day. He said afterwards he would never have become president without it.
The park is the reason to come and it is genuinely underrated. Bison on the road, wild horses on the ridgelines, prairie dog towns, and a scenic loop through badlands that most Americans have never seen because they went to the parks everybody has heard of instead.
The light is the thing we would tell every owner about. In the last hour before sunset the badlands do something with colour that is difficult to describe and very easy to photograph, and almost every rental listing in this town was shot at noon when the same landscape looks like grey rubble.
The Medora Musical has run every summer night since the 1960s in an amphitheatre cut into a bluff. It is unashamedly a variety show about Theodore Roosevelt and the West, and it is much better than that description suggests.
And the Maah Daah Hey Trail runs north through more than a hundred miles of this landscape. There is no dead ground here, which is a strange thing to say about a town most people drive past on the interstate.
A great property in Medora doesn't just want a listing — it wants a point of view, an audience, and a brand the city itself would recognise.
Eight things a Medora guest genuinely needs — the park loop, the show, where the wild horses are, and the fact that there is no sign on the property.
Billings County prohibits signage on short-term rentals. Send photographs of the approach and the door, precise coordinates, and a description of the building. A guest circling a badlands road at dusk is a bad review.
The entrance is at Medora, and the scenic loop is the main event. Bison on the road, prairie dog towns, and overlooks over the Little Missouri. Allow half a day.
The South Unit has a free-roaming horse population, most reliably seen on the western side of the loop early or late. Tell guests where and when rather than leaving it to luck.
Every night through the summer in an amphitheatre cut into a bluff, running since the 1960s. Guests planning a park visit rarely know it exists, and it turns one night into two.
Fire pits, charcoal grills, wood stoves and fireworks are prohibited by county ordinance. Propane and pellet grills may be allowed. Tell guests in advance and explain the grassland fire risk.
Right off Interstate 94 east of town with a visitor centre. Five minutes from the highway and the best introduction to the badlands for guests arriving late.
The Marquis de Morès's twenty-six-room house above the town, still furnished, open to visitors. A short tour with a genuinely strange story in it.
Over a hundred miles of singletrack running north through the badlands, one of the great American trails and largely unknown. Point riders and hikers to the Medora trailheads.
The following are composite, illustrative examples drawn from patterns common in short-season national park gateway markets. They are not descriptions of specific clients or properties.
A property in a hundred-day market that did not open or price the following summer until spring, by which point visitors routing a multi-park trip had already booked elsewhere.
Moved the release forward to January, published the season priced against known demand, and built a direct booking site so long-lead planners could reserve immediately.
A meaningful share of the short season was booked months in advance, reducing dependence on late demand in a market with no second chance.
A property with genuinely spectacular surroundings, represented by a midday photo set in which the badlands looked flat, grey and unremarkable.
Reshot in the last hour of light, led the gallery with the landscape, and wrote the evening light into the copy as a specific reason to stay rather than pass through.
Enquiry volume improved from guests responding to the setting, and the property was able to hold a rate it had previously discounted to fill.
Recurring late arrivals and frustrated guests at a property with no signage permitted, reached by an unlit road, with directions that assumed local knowledge.
Built a full arrival pack with photographs of every turn and the building itself, precise coordinates, and a pre-arrival message sent the morning of check-in.
Arrival complaints stopped, and reviews began mentioning the clarity of the instructions rather than the difficulty of finding the place.
Demand in Medora peaks around June through August and runs quietest around January, February and March. Here is how the year actually books — and what to do about each stretch of the calendar.
Memorial Day to mid-September, with July and early August the core. The Medora Musical runs nightly through the summer and the park is fully accessible, and the town operates at capacity. Set rates and minimum stays for the whole season before it starts rather than adjusting into it.
Late May and September are the value weeks, with the park open, better light and far fewer visitors. September in particular is excellent and consistently under-priced, and it suits the photographers and hikers who make up a real slice of late-season demand.
From October the town largely closes. The musical ends, most businesses shut and the badlands winter is severe. Plan for a closed season, take longer stays where they come, and use the window to have next summer's calendar open and priced by January.
Long. Park trips get planned many months ahead and the property that is open and priced for next summer in January captures bookings that a property waiting until May never sees. In a hundred-day market, being late to market is expensive.
Short, typically one to three nights, because most guests are on a longer route. Giving them a reason for a second night is the highest-value change available, and the musical and the park's scenic loop together make that argument easily.
Whole houses in or near town that sleep a family group within the permitted occupancy tier, with on-site parking for every bedroom as the county requires. Clear arrival information matters more here than in any other market on this list.
Start with photography that shows what a guest actually gets here, then write the listing around a real itinerary rather than a feature list. Build a direct-booking site so returning guests can come back without going through a platform, and keep an email list segmented by season so you can reach last year's visitors before the calendar opens. Local search matters more than people expect in a market this size, because guests search the destination and the attraction rather than the word rental. A marketing agency layer handles the photography, the listing copy, the direct-booking site and the local SEO as one system instead of four disconnected jobs.
Memorial Day to mid-September, with July and early August the core, the Medora Musical running nightly and Theodore Roosevelt National Park fully accessible. Late May and September are good value with better light and fewer people. From October the town largely closes and the badlands winter is severe.
Long. Park trips are planned many months ahead, often as part of a multi-park western route, so the property that is open and priced for next summer in January captures bookings that a property waiting until May never sees.
A northern plains drive market from Bismarck, Fargo, Billings and Rapid City, plus interstate traffic on I-94 and a national audience routing a western park trip. Painted Canyon Overlook right off the interstate captures a lot of first-time attention.
On-site parking for every bedroom is a county requirement rather than a preference, so it is genuinely the first amenity to get right. Air conditioning and blackout blinds matter through long, hot summer evenings. Beyond that, excellent arrival instructions matter more than any feature, because signage is prohibited here.
Run your Airbnb, Vrbo, or website through Cavmir's free grader. It checks the things that decide whether guests book in Medora — photos, listing copy, page speed, local search — and shows you where bookings leak. Takes about a minute, and there's no sales call attached.
If the report says your booking engine is the weak link, that's fixable: a direct-booking website of your own means repeat guests stop paying platform fees to come back to you. That's the work Cavmir does — see Airbnb website design in Medora.
Talk to Cavmir today. We'll show you exactly what your Medora property is leaving on the table — and how fast we can change that.
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