Derek Dahlsad

6/4/2015: As rural populations have dwindled in the 21st century, reports of entire towns for sale have tempted people with utopian ideas and deep pockets. In the past five years, the towns of Swett and Scenic, South Dakota were both up for sale for a few hundred thousand dollars each. In 2013, the lone resident of Buford, Wyoming sold the town for just under a million dollars.

7/16/2014: Geneva Schow's father, Martin Schow, rebuilt a broken-down airplane near Regent, North Dakota, during the 1920s. Soaring through the North Dakota skies with her father gave young Geneva her first taste of flight. The plane, dubbed "Sakakawea" by her father, was also Geneva's first piloting experience as a teenager during the 1930s.

7/7/2014: On July 4th, 1859, writer Manton Marble sat on a hill near Breckenridge, Minnesota, watching lines of oxcarts inch their way through the Red River Valley below. Minnesota had become a state the year before, and the Dakota Territory was two years from creation. This made the Red River of the North the dividing line between the United States and the mysterious land visited by Lewis and Clark fifty years before.

6/30/2014: Dozens of mail-bombs sent to United States politicians during the 'Red Scare' of 1919 struck fear of communists, socialists, and anarchists into the hearts of Americans. A May Day parade in Cleveland, Ohio, spiralled into violence when the pro-labor marchers met an anti-communist group who demanded the red flags of socialism not fly alongside the American flag. Between 1919 and 1920, many States tried to prevent displays of support for those groups by passing laws against flying the red flag of Socialism or the black flag of Anarchism in public.

3/4/2014: The dark, cold winter causes epidemics of spring fever among college students, and in the 1940s this drove a fraternity into protest at North Dakota State University, then known as the North Dakota Agricultural College.

2/10/2014: On this date in 1938, the Bismarck Tribune reported the good fortune of two cousins living in North Dakota. Eva and Andy Larson had just learned they were to receive part of the Amsterdam Fortune, an inheritance due to the 6th generation descendants of the Sabo family.

1/15/2014: Otto Chenoweth was born to a wealthy Massachusetts family, but the lure of the Wild West brought him to Wyoming in the 1880s, where he found friendship among cattle rustlers and horse thieves.

10/15/2013: Herbert Chaffee became president of the Amenia and Sharon Land Company bonanza farm near Amenia, North Dakota, when his father passed away in 1892. The Chaffees believed the welfare of their workers was key to the success of the bonanza farms, but this benevolence was vulnerable to abuse.

9/30/2013: Alvin "Creepy" Karpis got his nickname for his crooked, sinister smile. While in the Kansas State Penitentiary for stealing a car, Karpis fell in with members of the Ma Barker Gang, a family of brutal bank robbers known for their bloody heists. When Karpis was released from jail in 1931, he teamed up with the Barker Gang and headed north.

8/11/2013: Esperanto was created in the 1870s as a universal language designed to help international communication. On this date in 1910, the Turtle Mountain Star reported a colony of Esperanto speakers had taken root in rural Stutsman County.