Merrill Piepkorn

6/5/2007: Squatters, anticipating the coming of the Railroad camped at various spots along the anticipated route, counting on the tracks to come through their camp which would then become a town. Squatters with that very thought in mind braved the winter of 1871 and ’72 around what would eventually become Bismarck, and their persistence paid off when the first train arrived on this date, June 5th in 1873.

6/4/2007: Bertril W. Benson was a member of the 1883 Dakota Territory legislative session, and he had enough clout, that when the area he represented was organized into a county the next year, Benson County was named after him.

6/3/2007: Dorothy Stickney was born on June 21st, 1896 in Dickinson to Margaret and Dr. Victor Hugo Stickney. She made her first appearance of the stage of the Minot Theatre in 1921, giving recitations with the Southern Belles Concert Party.

6/1/2007: The cities of Yankton and Bismarck get along well enough these days. Haven’t read of any fracas between the two towns lately have you? Truth be told…they probably don’t pay much attention to each other. But that wasn’t always the case.

5/9/2007: 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.

5/5/2007: Hatch’s Battalion, a Minnesota Volunteer Cavalry that served in the Union Army during the Civil War was organized at Ft. Snelling and St. Paul Minnesota. Companies A-B-C and D mustered in between July 25th and September 1863.

4/22/2007: When Air Force One touched down at the Grand Forks Air Force Base on this date, April, 22nd, 1997, the flooded Red River was still riding at its record crest of 54.11 feet.

4/21/2007: The National Weather Service had a long standing forecast that the Red River in Grand Forks would crest at 49 feet during the flood of 1997, and the service didn’t officially revise its forecast until the river actually reached 49 feet on April 16th.

4/20/2007: Don Gonyea is currently the White House correspondent for National Public Radio. You hear his regular reports on Morning Edition and All Things Considered. In April of 1997 he was an NPR correspondent stationed in Detroit. But he also covered other major stories occurring in the Midwest, like the Red River flood of that year.

4/19/2007: The dike in the Lincoln Park area of Grand Forks began to give way, but little did people know at the time, that in just hours the Red River would be flowing through most of the town. In fact, late that night, and into the early morning hours of Saturday the 19th, Mike Jacobs and other Folks at the Grand Forks Herald were still in their downtown building putting out the news.