Merrill Piepkorn

4/18/2007: Mike Olson, host of “Into the Music” and the Saturday Night blues show on Prairie Public, was living in Grand Forks and working at the UND radio stations 10 years ago, when city residents were in the midst of the flood battle of their lives. On this date, March 18th, 1997, Mike went home after work, and after roller blading around the block with his son, sat down on the back porch of his house. He had heard that a dike in another part of town had been breached, but the flood still didn’t seem like it was threatening his neighborhood…his family.

4/17/2007: Recent spring rain and an early April snowstorm got people in the Red River Valley a little nervous about flooding…and there has been some minor flooding this spring, but nothing compared to the record-setting flood of 1997.

4/15/2007: Part 2 of our 9 part series on the Red River flood of 1997 is a poem by Jane Kurtz titled Winter of 1997:

4/14/2007: Hydrologists identify five major factors that can determine spring flood conditions: a wet fall, an unusually cold winter, heavy snow accumulation, a cool spring followed by a warming trend, and heavy rainfall during the thaw. I

4/10/2007: Richard Sykes was not a humble man…and this English gentleman was proud of his roots. As a partner in a group of investors, in the early 1880s Sykes purchased 41,000 acres of Northern Pacific Railway land for a dollar an acre.

4/4/2007: During this 2006-2007 performance season, the Fargo-Moorhead Symphony is celebrating 75 years as an “official” orchestra. In 1931 Mrs. A.J. Jardine, along with other volunteers from the community, chartered the group, assembled the orchestra piece by piece, and selected Harry Rudd to be the first conductor of the new orchestra.

4/1/2007: The village of Medina, North Dakota incorporated in 1906 and it became a city on this date, April 1st, 1946.

3/31/2007: The Northern Pacific Railroad townsite of Wyndmere was established in1883.

3/25/2007: Fort Pembina is a name that applied to several fur trading posts and forts built at various times, beginning around 1793, near the junction of the Pembina and Red Rivers in northeastern North Dakota.

3/18/2007: Dave Osborn was a fine football player at Cando High School who went on to be a standout running back for the University of North Dakota Fighting Sioux.