North Dakota state park will no longer be named for Civil War general who fought Native Americans

BISMARCK, N.D. -- A North Dakota state park will no longer be named after a Civil War-era general who led attacks that killed hundreds of Native Americans.

Sully Creek State Park, in the rugged Badlands near Medora, is now Rough Rider State Park, the state Parks and Recreation Department announced Sunday. The name change was also made with the announcement of plans for a $4 million expansion of the park's campground and other amenities. The park, established in 1970, is popular with hikers and horseback riders.

The change follows a national move to rename places with names many people now find offensive or unjust. As part of that effort, the federal government in recent years has renamed hundreds of geographic features that had names that contained an offensive term referencing Native American females, and it has replaced the names of Army bases named for Confederate officers.

Department Director Cody Schulz on Monday said park officials were aware of the “complex history” around General Alfred Sully and the hostile military campaigns he led in the 1860s against the Sioux. Schulz said the name change aligns with the equestrian nature of the park and the Western heritage and culture of the region, including President Theodore Roosevelt, who hunted and ranched in the area in the 1880s. A presidential library for Roosevelt is under construction nearby.

The Sully name was part of the considerations but not the primary reason for the name change, Schulz said. A creek named Sully Creek runs near the park.

Sully led the military campaigns against Sioux peoples, including the Battle of Whitestone Hill in 1863 and the Battle of Killdeer Mountain in 1864 in what is now North Dakota — attacks that killed an estimated hundreds of Native Americans combined.

Reconciliation and healing can't move forward unless officials move away from “the conquest mentality (of) naming public places after people of war,” said Cheryl Kary, executive director of the Sacred Pipe Resource Center, which engages with the urban tribal populations in the Bismarck-Mandan area. She noted two parks in the Bismarck area named for other such figures, including Custer Park, which faced an unsuccessful effort to rename it.

“It's especially egregious when we name our parks with those names because parks are supposed to be places of refuge and peace and serenity, family time, things like that, and yet they're named after violence, the people of violence,” said Kary, an enrolled member of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe. She said the Rough Rider name is better than the Sully Creek name but is not ideal.

In 2019, Congress renamed Sullys Hill National Game Preserve near Devils Lake, North Dakota, to White Horse Hill National Game Preserve — a change requested by the Spirit Lake Tribe.