The greasy smell of what’s known in Medora, North Dakota, as pitchfork steak fondue hung in the air as we took our seats for the show.
The dinner of beef skewered on a pitchfork and cooked in a vat of oil (don’t ask for it to be served rare, this comes medium-well done) was a precursor to the evening’s main event — the Medora Musical, a singing spectacle that promised to celebrate the history of the American west, with Teddy Roosevelt as the star of the show.
The state has adopted the 26th US president, who was raised in New York, as an honorary North Dakotan. My wife and I had already hiked the sprawling Theodore Roosevelt National Park, taken a picture alongside a human-sized teddy bear and eaten at Theodore’s Dining Room.
Roosevelt first visited what eventually became North Dakota in early adulthood on a hunting trip, and was so taken with the area that he invested in a cattle ranch there. “I have always said I would not have been president had it not been for my experience in North Dakota,” he would later say.
I wondered whether this visit to North Dakota would be as formative for my life. It was July 4 2022 and we were on a quest: North Dakota was state number 33 in our mission to visit all 50. It started with a post-pandemic resolution to see more of the country, then once we totted up our existing state count, snowballed into trying to see all of it.
And though it is a strange, and admittedly arbitrary, endeavour, it is one that growing numbers of travellers are undertaking. The All Fifty Club was founded in 2006 to help “track, share, and celebrate the accomplishment of visiting all 50 states”. It now counts more than 10,500 members, about 85 per cent of whom have completed the quest, with the remainder closing in on it.
Beyond the US, the phenomenon of “completist” travel is also on the rise. Online communities such as Most Travelled People (mtp.travel) and NomadMania (nomadmania.com) feature leader boards which members climb the more they travel. Some are aiming to visit all 193 countries recognised by the UN, others all sites on the Unesco world heritage list (1,199). Nomad Mania has further split the world into 1,301 regions (the top-ranked traveller is currently only 17 away from a full house). It also has a Slow ranking, designed to encourage more meaningful experiences rather than airport-to-airport dashes, in which travellers must spend at least 11 days in a location in order to “claim” it.
Back in Medora, we received some bad news over the loudspeaker. The outdoor show was being cancelled at the last minute due to a thunderstorm that was heading our way. We could see the dark clouds rolling in over hills emblazoned with the giant Hollywood-style “MEDORA” sign, the backdrop to the theatre’s stage.
The announcer told the crowd that there would be no refunds but that we were all welcome to come back whenever we liked for a complimentary show. As much as we had enjoyed our time in Medora, we weren’t sure when we would be back.
We live in New York, so plenty of states are low-hanging fruit — the Carolinas, the Virginias and over a dozen more are easily doable in a weekend. But once you pick those off, it becomes more arduous, more time-consuming and more expensive.
We drove through the night from New York to Cleveland, Ohio, after our flight was cancelled; we were grounded in Minnesota en route back from our three-state swing through Montana, Idaho and Wyoming. And there were some anxious experiences too. While we were in Mobile, Alabama, for New Year’s Eve, there was a shooting in a crowd just a few streets from where we were having dinner.
We completed our 50-state tour in August with a week in Alaska, which I later learnt is a common state to end on, along with Hawaii . . . and North Dakota. The Flickertail State has even set up the “Best for Last Club” which entitles visitors who finish the 50 states in North Dakota to a T-shirt and certificate.
As we wound down our trip, we contemplated how worthwhile the whole project had been, and why some travellers set themselves this goal to begin with. According to a YouGov survey last year, the average American traveller has been to 17 states, the most popular being Florida, New York, California, Texas and Pennsylvania.
The states visited by the fewest Americans, on the other hand, are Alaska, North Dakota, Idaho, Montana and Nebraska. And that really sums up what it was all about — setting the goal forces travellers to discover places they wouldn’t ordinarily think to visit.
We had fantastic trips to these ignored states. We loved our pit-stop in the tiny town of Salmon, Idaho, and have become urban clichés as we rave to our friends about how beautiful Montana is.
No disrespect to Warren Buffett but Nebraska was harder to fall in love with. But even there I was able to try the state’s much-loved runza sandwich (beef, cabbage and onion in a doughy pocket) and got to learn the history of the Knights of Ak-Sar-Ben, an organisation founded in 1895 by local businessmen to promote Omaha during an economic depression. The group took its name as an anadrome of Nebraska since, in the telling of one founder, “everything seems to be going backwards these days”.
Alicia Rovey, founder of the All Fifty Club, says that after the uncertainty of the pandemic years, more people are adopting a carpe diem approach to travel. And while travelling in retirement remains popular, “there seems to be an increase in the number of young people who take a gap from work to travel or take advantage of working remotely.”
Visiting the under-visited is a common theme. “Deciding to make it a goal to see all 50, it puts it in a framework,” says Rovey. “Rather than just saying, ‘Well, where should we go next?’ it’s like, ‘Oh, we need to go to the Midwest to visit those states.’”
Others are propelled by their work, like Brent McIntosh, who visited 36 states while he was deputy staff secretary for George W Bush. “Between my childhood and travelling with my parents, and then travelling with the president, and then a few random trips of my own, I was up to 48 states,” said McIntosh, who is now general counsel at Citigroup. He eventually visited the last two states, Vermont and North Dakota, earning a “Best for Last” T-shirt in Fargo.
What constitutes a visit to a state is in the eye of the beholder. While it’s commonly accepted that airport layovers don’t count, some feel that spending a night in the state is what makes the cut. The guidelines of the All Fifty Club say that in order to count it, you should set foot on the ground of a state and breathe the air, though Rovey has thought of making a quixotic amendment to include creating a memory in each place.
“What do you remember from being in Wyoming? What experience do you remember from being in Delaware?” she says. “Some states, if you’re doing a lot of road trips, things like that, you may not remember.”
Some travellers have decided to raise the bar even higher. Rovey says she knows one couple who recently visited the states in alphabetical order. Another couple renewed their wedding vows in every state. Some use it as a platform to promote good works — like Al Whitney, who has donated blood in all 50 states, twice.
My threshold was having a meal in the state, ideally something local to the area. For a top-tier US delicacy, look no further than a Nashville hot chicken sandwich in Tennessee; for pure indulgence in the south, enjoy a chicken fried steak (steak cooked in the style of fried chicken); and Michigan makes Cornish pasties bigger than any Brit could ever dream of. St Louis-style pizza in Missouri, with its yeast-less crust and processed Provel cheese topping, is more of an acquired taste.
With all 50 states now crossed off our list, we’re wondering whether to set ourselves another goal to take us to new parts unthought of. Visiting all 63 US national parks? Or maybe getting to the five major US territories (American Samoa, Guam, Puerto Rico, the Northern Mariana Islands and the Virgin Islands). Or we could give North Dakota another try and finally redeem our tickets for the Medora Musical.
Joshua Franklin is the FT’s US banking editor
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