Jayme L. Job

8/28/2013: During the early half of the twentieth century, migrant farm workers often spent the summer traveling north from Oklahoma to North Dakota, participating in the harvest of the nation’s breadbasket as part of the Great Wheat Belt migration.

8/24/2013: A terrifying ordeal for Litchville residents was reported by The Bismarck Tribune on this date in 1948.

8/22/2013: Although most North Dakotans today are well aware of the role played by Scandinavian and even German settlers in the state’s early history, few people are familiar with later ethnic immigrations, especially those at the turn of the 19th century. Between 1890 and 1910, immigration to the Great Plains changed dramatically, as changing political and social conditions in Eastern Europe led to an influx of Greeks, Italians, Czechs, and Poles.

8/20/2013: Today, North Dakota students looking for a career in business have several options. Colleges and technical schools offering business, accounting, and office management degrees can be found in all of the state’s major cities, plus there’s the plethora of online options that can be accessed from anywhere. In the early 1900s, however, demand was high for an education in business, while schools were few and far between.

8/19/2013: William Howard Taft, 27th President of the United States, took office in January of 1909. He rode into the White House on a wave of popular support, and became known for his agenda on domestic reform, hoping to improve civil service practices, as well as the postal service. However, soon into his presidency, he gained notoriety for proposing a federal income tax to Congress in June of 1909; Congress approved the resolution of the Sixteenth Amendment to the Constitution a few weeks later, allowing for just such a tax. Amidst the furor and excitement caused by the proposal, most Americans paid little attention to other acts passed by President Taft that summer, including a short document titled “Proclamation 879,” which the President signed on this date in 1909.

8/18/2013: In July of 1864, Fort Rice was established on the Missouri River, about thirty miles south of present-day Mandan.

8/17/2013: While the governor’s away, criminals will not go free – a lesson George Nelson learned on this date in 1918.

8/15/2013: The State Historical Society of North Dakota was a fledgling organization in 1905. Although its roots went back to Statehood in 1889, the effort to save significant sites and artifacts was ill-defined and ill financed. Several previous attempts to establish a statewide historical society, including one in 1895, had failed to gain public support, even though a room to house collections had been set up in the Capitol Building. By 1897 the organization had fallen into decay and much of North Dakota’s early history was fading away or being exported to Eastern institutions.

8/14/2013: In the spring of 1917, Stark County residents were shocked by a double-homicide that took place near Gladstone, North Dakota.

8/12/2013: James LeRoy Iverson, North Dakota’s longest serving inmate, was released from the Bismarck Penitentiary on this date in 2009. At seventy, Iverson had spent more than forty years behind the penitentiary’s walls for killing two Grand Forks women in 1968. His release made national headlines, highlighting the growing number of elderly inmates within America’s prisons.