Merrill Piepkorn

5/9/2012: Smokey Bear is the longest running public service campaign in the United States, with Smokey’s mission being to raise public awareness to prevent fires and protect our nation’s forests. But Smokey wasn’t the first “spokes animal” speaking out for fire safety.

6/2/2010: This month the Catholic Church is celebrating the one hundredth anniversary of the Diocese of Bismarck. In addition to centennial events planned for later in June, the Diocese published three books, (four, really if you count both volumes of the huge cookbook!). One of those books, titled "I Will Appoint You Shepherds," is a necrology...an account of the lives of the bishops and priests, now deceased, who served the Roman Catholic Church in western North Dakota.

6/1/2010: The Bismarck Diocese of the Catholic Church is celebrating its Centennial this month. In addition to the many planned festivities, the Diocese published three books to mark the occasion; a history book of the Catholic Church in western North Dakota; a necrology, that is an account of the lives of priests and bishops now deceased, and a two-volume cookbook.

5/5/2010: If one were looking for a little action in the Grand Forks area the weekend of May 5th and 6th, 1933, one only need look in the Thursday May 4th edition of the Grand Forks Herald newspaper.

5/4/2010: Did Dickinson businessman, George Berzel get away with something when charges against him were dismissed? We'll let you be the judge.

5/3/2010: The North Dakota Century Code has a lot to say about marriage. The Century Code is the codification of all general and permanent law enacted since early statehood.

5/1/2010: These days, household tips, the kind you might find in your local newspaper, might include new ways to use your pop-up disinfecting wipes or advice as to when to change your plug-in air freshener. Seasonable cleaning tips found in a May 1913 issue of the North Dakota Advocate newspaper were a little more basic.

3/25/2010: Many of the tales told about the early days of western North Dakota are about the rough and tumble men, and occasionally women, of the west. Cowboys and cattlemen, rustlers and outlaws. But not everyone from that era was of that nature. A letter to the editor from a 1908 early spring edition of the Dickinson Press indicates that some folks were concerned with culture and some of the finer things of life still missing in these young pioneer towns.

3/24/2010: "Mecca of Homesteaders; Thriving Villages, Prosperous Farmers." That's the headline for a story found in a late March edition of the Dickinson Press, extolling the virtues of life in Hettinger County in 1907. One has to wonder if the article was written for the locals, or for people back east, still contemplating a move out west.

6/10/2009: Today is the 125th anniversary of the Emmons County Record in Linton. The Record is North Dakota's third largest weekly newspaper despite the fact that Linton has fewer than thirteen hundred residents. The paper was founded by Civil War veteran, Darwin Reed Streeter, who moved from Bismarck with a horse-drawn wagon over a prairie trail to the tiny county seat town of Williamsport in May of 1884. The wagon hauled an old Army hand press and a few cases of steel type.