Jim Davis

If undisturbed, a poppy seed will lie on the ground for years without producing a plant, and partially for that reason, the poppy has become a symbol of war and remembrance.

In the spring of 1937, R. L. Melville, while walking along Apple Creek south of Bismarck, found an old axe, hobbles made of iron for a horse or mule, and some links for a log chain. But it was a rusty old branding iron buried in the sand that caught his attention. The brand had been forged in the shape of a Masonic emblem. On this date in 1937, responding to a reporter’s questions, William A. Falconer, Bismarck’s oldest resident and historian, related the story of the man for whom the branding iron was forged and how he met an untimely death.

Medora was a thriving city in 1886, nestled in the Bad Lands of Dakota Territory, but a series of events including blizzards, market fluctuations and the loss of its main supporter, the Marquis DeMores, diminished its significance to all but a small number of businessmen and area ranchers.

Western history has a way of making legends out of men or animals, and sometimes it is difficult to separate the facts from the legend. On this date in…

In 1919, farms and communities across the state had been drained of young men -- called into service during two years of war. Weekly casualty lists…

In 1919, Memorial Day was a solemn occasion. It found an exhausted population in North Dakota striving to return to some sense of the lives they had prior…

Radio was an exciting medium in the first quarter of the 20th Century. On this date in 1922, three young men from Fargo, Lawrence Hamm, Earl Reinecke and…

Slightly over one year after the First and Second Regiments of the North Dakota National Guard departed from the State, the war was over. An announcement…

By the end of October in 1918, the people of North Dakota held an apocalyptic view of unfolding events. The whirlwind pace of an incredibly violent year…

“No Man’s Land,” the area between the trenches, was a concentrated killing field that had to be crossed if any advance was going to take place. Sentries…