May is National Historic Preservation Month. Today we will hear about some of the historic places in North Dakota that are included in North Dakota’s State Historic Sites Registry.
Father John F. Malo was born in 1828 in Montreal. He studied and was ordained a priest there, then traveled to Oregon and Washington, where he began working as a missionary. His travels took him to Cape Horn, the Isthmus of Panama, and eventually to North Dakota. Here, he worked in Belcourt, Elbowoods, and on the Fort Berthold Reservation.
Malo passed away at St. Alexius Hospital in Bismarck in 1904, and various newspapers around the state published articles of his passing, noting that he was “known and loved all through the east and southeast.” He had done this work for close to 50 years. His funeral took place at St. Mary’s in Bismarck, it was reported, “in the presence of a large congregation which had come from far and near to assist at the obsequies of the… missionary whose name has been a household word—a synonym for zeal, charity, and virtue—from ocean to ocean.”
Around this date in 1927, almost 100 years after his birth, Father Malo was still remembered and honored as a new state park was being planned, intended as a memorial to Father Malo and this history. Major Dana Wright, an early and enthusiastic historian in North Dakota involved with the State Historical Society, took interest in this project and became involved with it. He reported that the Great Northern Railroad owned the land on which Malo had constructed a small log building with living space in the attic and a chapel on the main floor. Malo “christened” this building “St. Claude” and opened it on May 3, 1882. Located near St. John, it was “the first house of worship” erected in Rolette County.
The railroad deeded this land to the State Historical Society in 1927 to be used as a park in Malo’s memory. Today, visitors can view the archaeological remains of the mission and depressions nearby, marking 47 grave sites.
Dakota Datebook by Sarah Walker
Sources:
- Bismarck Daily Tribune, June 20, 1904, p1
- The Pioneer Express, July 8, 1904, p10
- The Jamestown Weekly Alert, June 23, 1904, p5
- Bismarck Tribune, May 18, 1927, p7
- https://www.history.nd.gov/historicsites/stclaude/index.html
