Search results for

8/9/2006: Ed Molen was an expert horseman and blacksmith, and he had a knack for locks. Molen also seemed like a man who didn’t overstay his welcome. Even the State Penitentiary had a hard time keeping him in one place.

8/13/2006: Hank Smith, a former resident of Lakota, sat in his room in Minneapolis and watched a broom straw suspended by a string from the ceiling swing wildly. He knew bad weather was on its way, despite the clear skies outside. Thirty-six hours later, Minneapolis had the worst storm in years.

8/15/2006: An airplane alighted atop a hill near the Falcon family’s home in Trenton. He descended the hill to the house and woke the family just shortly after midnight today in 1917. The mysterious aviator spoke to Mrs. Falcon, a woman of French and Indian descent, for nearly ten minutes. After he had left, she told her husband and children what he had said.

8/20/2006: While Russian thistle is usually a problem, the noxious weed proved to be a solution for farmers through the Great Depression. The Litchville Bulletin reported today in 1936 the advantages and directions for using Russian thistle as feed, hay, or silage.

8/22/2006: Many a North Dakota farmer has helplessly watched a promising crop get hailed out.

8/23/2006: Six soldiers of the 31st Infantry and two civil scouts stopped at a spring in southwest Benson County today in 1868 while escorting a mail wagon from Fort Totten to Fort Stevenson.

8/27/2006: The spaniel was a bird dog, but he wasn’t in search of your normal birdie. He didn’t even hunt in fields or prairies. Rather, he hunted the golf course–but only if his owner, R.A. Cornwell of Kramer hit a bad shot.

8/29/2006: Robert Campbell pushed east from the Rocky Mountains, while his partner, William Sublette came west upon the steamboat Otto from St. Louis. The two fur traders reunited today in 1833 near the mouth of the Yellowstone River and began erecting a fort to house the Campbell and Sublette Fur Company. Construction of the fort was fully underway in September, and was open for business on Christmas Day. Fort William, named after William Sublette, was constructed only two and a half miles from the formidable American Fur Company at Fort Union.

9/4/2006: The restless boy stopped his horses and gazed toward the Blue Buttes of McKenzie County. Beyond them, he pictured majestic mountains, mighty rivers, and wide oceans. Years later, Erlings Rolfsrud would look back at that boy and write, “If only he could get away from this land where folks did nothing more exciting than stretch blankets of wheatfields to cover the prairie hills–then he could find Characters and Places worth writing about.”

9/10/2006: The Fargo Forum announced today in 1939 that the bas-relief of a pioneer woman and her daughter titled “Daughters of Dakota” would be unveiled and dedicated on September 14 in observance of North Dakota’s fiftieth birthday.