Christina Campbell

5/31/2006: Richard Sykes was a representative for a syndicate based out of Manchester, England looking to make land investments in the northwest United States. He arrived in Dakota Territory in December of 1881 and purchased 45,000 acres from the Northern Pacific Railway for about $1 an acre in Wells, Stutsman and LaMoure counties. His goal was to sell or rent improved land to farmers for a profit.

5/27/2006: Seventy-five years ago on this day, May 27, 1931, an F3 tornado collided with the Great Northern Railway’s passenger train, The Empire Builder, east of Fargo.

5/8/2006: Yesterday we were introduced to Felix Vinatieri, best remembered for is his position as Custer’s last bandleader.

5/7/2006: Felix Vinatieri was the first musician and composer of note to have lived and worked in Dakota Territory.

4/25/2006: The death of Theodore Roosevelt in 1919 sparked an immediate interest in a memorial honoring his time spent in North Dakota. Over the next few years a site at the Little Missouri Badlands was selected by a group of entrepreneurs interested in building tourism in the state. But the proposal lay dormant as the project had little support from local ranchers who feared losing grazing acreage. But by the 1930’s overgrazing, drought and the Great Depression forced many ranchers to abandon their homesteads or sell for as little as $2 an acre to Franklin Roosevelt’s Resettlement Administration.

4/7/2006: The Mexican civil war, sometimes called the Mexican Revolution, erupted in 1910. For the most part, the violence remained south of the Rio Grande. But when the United States pulled their support from the legendary outlaw and Mexican revolutionary Francisco ‘Pancho’ Villa, he felt betrayed by the American government.