MEDORA - A lot can happen between the time a guy saddles up his horse and the end of the ride.

The hard ride to build a North Dakota Cowboy Hall of Fame crossed a rocky stream at a groundbreaking ceremony Tuesday in Medora.

Weak winter sunlight filtering through bare cottonwood trees didn't offer much warmth to the 50 who attended, but the message and the moment were warming in their own right.

Construction on the long-awaited Hall of Fame will start in several months. When two springs come and go, it will be finished, a monument to cowboys and rodeo greats, ranchers, homesteaders and American Indians.

A good horseman always keeps an eye out for trouble underfoot, but no one who hitched up to the Hall of Fame seven years ago could have predicted how hard it would be to stay in the stirrups.

The Hall of Fame, which will abut the Theodore Roosevelt National Park, will cost about $3.3 million. Raising enough money to stake a claim on construction has been a long hard job.

The economy, drought, Sept. 11, the deep fall in the stock market - all of those factors combined to make finding money tougher than getting comfortable in a bedroll on hard dirt.

"It took longer than we thought," said Hall of Fame president Phil Baird. "We didn't know what the journey was going to be like."

The job still isn't done, but it's far enough along to go forward, eased by a 10-year financing bond to stretch out both payments and time to find more supporters.

Tuesday, Baird, executive director Darrell Dorgan and Hall of Fame supporters were looking forward, not back, to a time when the Hall of Fame is a bustling center for the western way of life, yet another reason to head west in North Dakota to Medora.

Evelyn Neuens, a founding member of the Hall of Fame, was particularly spry and energized by the ceremonial day.

She's 91, born on a ranch back in the Badlands, and cowboys, ranching and rodeos have defined her.

"It's probably the best way of life there is," she said. "This is great country, and these are great people."

Only one of North Dakota's Cowboy Hall of Fame inductees attended the ceremony.

Tom Tescher, of Medora, doesn't talk as well as he used to, but the look on his face said it all. One day, his picture will hang in the hall among other great rodeo riders.

His daughter, Beth, said the entire Tescher family thinks the location of the Cowboy Hall of Fame in Medora is a wonderful tribute to the area's legacy.

After all, even Theodore Roosevelt admitted that his years as a Medora cowboy were the making of him as a man and a president.

Mary Griffin is president of the Medora Chamber of Commerce, so her effusiveness is understandable.

She says the tiny town, so charming in its western character rimmed now by white-tipped Badlands, is headed for yet another revival as the Hall of Fame center.

"Medora has always had a calling," she said.

For Neuens, who stayed on her horse up until last year, the Hall of Fame has been a goal as worthy as any in her long life and better than some.

"It's given me a purpose," she said.