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Merry Helm

Contributor, Dakota Datebook
  • 7/13/2017: The 1930s were hard on North Dakota farmers. About the only thing that survived the dust and grasshoppers were Russian thistles. Cattle starved or fell dead with bellies full of dirt, and farm foreclosures became frequent. An elevator man in Sanish thought the price of wheat hit rock bottom at 56 cents a bushel and wrote on his market chalkboard, “Don’t faint when you read these prices.” Little did anyone realize that within the next several years, wheat would go as low as 17 cents.
  • 7/11/2017: Clement A. Lounsberry was born in 1843 in Indiana. Like many people who gained success as adults, Lounsberry overcame great hardships during his youth, including being orphaned.
  • 6/15/2017: Construction began on Fort Buford on this date in 1866; where the Missouri meets the Yellowstone River near Williston. Fort Buford served as a military post until 1881, when Sitting Bull surrendered to the fort’s military officials.
  • 6/14/2017: On this date in 1942, a 39-year-old German named George Dasch called the FBI to set up an appointment to talk to J. Edgar Hoover. The night before, a German submarine had put Dasch and three others ashore on Long Island, where they buried their uniforms and explosives. Four others came ashore at Jacksonville, FL; they were to join forces in the Midwest on July 4th.
  • 4/21/2017: Tomorrow is Earth Day, so we take this opportunity to tell the story of a man who had an enormous impact on wildlife conservation in North Dakota. Jay Darling, of Iowa, was a renowned political cartoonist during the “dirty thirties,” a time of bankruptcy, soup lines, drought and awe-inspiring dust storms. On the Great Plains, conditions were disastrous for waterfowl, and the problem wasn’t limited to dried up wetlands; hunting practices were also out of control.
  • 4/12/2017: George Bird Grinnell, a respected authority on the Plains Indians, passed away on this date in 1938 at the age of 88. In 2004, conservationist Shane Mahoney wrote this of Grinnell: “He was many things: scientist, hunter, explorer, naturalist, entrepreneur and author. Above all else, however, George Bird Grinnell was and remains the most influential conservationist in North American history.”
  • 3/31/2017: On this date in 1951, The Fargo Forum ran a big spread titled, “Orchestra Success Regarded by Outsiders as Astounding.” The story, written by Roy P. Johnson, celebrated the symphony’s 20th anniversary.
  • 3/24/2017: On this date in 1902, word came from Lisbon that a woman had been found dead near Velva. Elaine Lindgren wrote about it in her book, “Land in Her Own Name:”
  • 3/15/2017: On this date in 1977, the trial of Leonard Peltier was in its second day. Peltier was an activist in the American Indian Movement or AIM and, in 1972, he took part in a 71-day standoff with FBI agents at Wounded Knee. The years after the standoff were marked by violence between the tribal administration of Dick Wilson and his opponents, who were supported by AIM.
  • 3/14/2017: Leonard Peltier has become larger than life since receiving back-to-back life sentences for the murder of two FBI agents in a shootout in Pine Ridge, South Dakota over 40 years ago. It was on this date in 1977 that his trial in Fargo began.