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8/4/2015: The weather was bright and hot when an expert U.S. surveyor and his team finished marking the North Dakota-South Dakota border on this date in 1892. Split along the seventh standard parallel, the Dakotas are marked every half-mile by quartzite monuments. Over 700 originally lined the boundary. Only a few hundred remain today.

8/10/2015: The Good Roads Movement of the late 1800s and early 1900s sought to establish a good system of roads across the country. Originally, the movement was boosted more by bicyclists rather than motorists. However, as the car caught on, auto enthusiasts also saw the need for good roads. So did communities. The improvement in roads marked a fundamental change.

8/18/2015: Today there is much hoot and holler about what a feminist is and what that means. While few Americans call themselves a feminist, most actually do support equality for the sexes, but that support wasn’t always so popular. It took some courage for early feminists to take a stand, but they achieved a great deal.

8/20/2015: The famous leader of the early civil rights movement in the US, W.E.B. DuBois said: "The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line."

8/25/2015: They called him the “King of Piano Tuners,” and he was known as the best man to tune pianos in North Dakota many decades ago. His name was Arthur Wales and he came to Fargo in 1891 to keep the pianos in Dakota in tune. In that era, a piano was often the center of entertainment in the home, and families used to gather around the piano to play and sing their favorite songs at holidays and get-togethers.

9/1/2015: Oakes, North Dakota was founded on this date in 1886. Drawing its name from a Northern Pacific Railroad official, engineers platted the Dickey County town two weeks later, and four weeks after organizing, Oakes became a Northwestern Railroad station.

9/2/2015: On this date in 1890, Theodore Roosevelt returned to Medora for his last substantial visit to his Elkhorn Ranch. Arriving with his wife Edith, two sisters and three other companions, the party was met with heavy rain at the train station. Roosevelt's ranch managers Sylvane Ferris and Bill Merrifield were there to meet them.

9/8/2015: The Northern Pacific was the second transcontinental railroad. President Lincoln signed the charter in 1864. Investors from the northeast and Chicago were eager to build a railroad linking the Great Lakes to the American northwest. Josiah Perham was the force behind the effort, but he had difficulty getting it financed.

9/9/2015: Anyone who knows anything about fishing knows that Devils Lake is one of the premier fishing lakes in our region. In fact, the Devils Lake website proclaims it has “world class fishing.” Strangely, it was not always this way, for there was a time when no game fish lived in Devils Lake, only miserable minnows – but not when the railroad reached Devils Lake in 1883. At that time, word spread that the big lake, Dakota’s largest, was a paradise for anglers. Boosters compared Devils Lake to Lake Minnetonka in Minnesota, except that Devils Lake was considered “ much larger and deeper.” As for fishing, it was said that the “supply of extra fine fish is inexhaustible.”

9/10/2015: On this date in 1950, a groundbreaking ceremony was held at the town site of New Town, North Dakota. A furrow of earth was cut on the future Main Street for the town, which was being created out of the certainty that the Garrison Reservoir would flood other towns along the Missouri River.