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11/30/2017: If you’ve ever been around the Fort Berthold Reservation, you may have driven across the Four Bear Bridge, although you were probably not aware of its long and rich history.

11/29/2017: On this date in 1967, the McIntosh County Historical Society was formed. The first ten years were difficult as the founders struggled to gain broad membership. But the tide turned in 1977 when the county received a grant of $143,000 to construct a Heritage Center.

12/18/2017: At the turn of the Twentieth Century, Henry Ford’s Model T and the Wright Brothers’ airplane were still in the future, but railroads and telegraph lines had already spanned the country. There was a great sense of optimism, a feeling that anything was possible.

12/20/2017: We were at War, and for Carl Kositzky, State Auditor for North Dakota, the Great War had more meaning than many.

12/22/2017: It was 1912, and the holiday season was under way in the community of Britton, North Dakota. Mr. R. Welch gave a well-attended and festive ‘dancing party’, and the first snow of the season had adorned the rolling countryside of Burleigh County, giving the opportunity for sleigh rides. While May and Elva Doan visited with neighbors, Jewell Doan, along with C.A. Anderson and Herman Olson, ventured out into the newly anointed hills to hunt rabbits. With Christmas dinner only a few evenings away, the hunting party bagged 32 rabbits.

12/27/2017: Holiday festivities in Devils Lake in 1922 included many typical events … Christmas services at churches across the city, school Christmas pageants, a Boy Scouts band concert, and another free band concert scheduled for New Year’s Eve. A New Year’s Eve program at the Bethel Evangelical Free Church would offer coffee, jule cake and singing, followed by a watch night service in Norwegian.

4/17/2017: Today there are more than 30,000 farms in North Dakota encompassing almost 40 million acres. North Dakota leads all other states in the production of sunflower seeds and barley. Wheat is the state’s leading crop, ranking behind only Kansas. North Dakota is also a leading state in canola, navy beans, oats, pinto beans, soybeans, and sugar beets. But strawberries are nowhere on the list of important North Dakota crops.

4/14/2017: The 1890s were not kind to North Dakota. The price of wheat declined by 70%. High railroad rates hurt farmers. State tax receipts decreased, and the state had difficulty paying its bills.

4/19/2017: Frontiersmen on the Great Plains mingled with settlers across the northern border long before North Dakota became a state. Both American and British fur traders congregated along the Missouri River and established posts prior to 1800. The Hudson Bay and North West Companies established operations in the Red River Valley. Canadians ventured down to Pembina in the early 1800s. Pembina became a bustling center of the fur trade. The role of the town expanded as metis ox cart trains hauled furs east to St. Paul in the autumn and returned with supplies for the winter. Several prominent St. Paul businessmen – James J. Hill, Norman Kittson, Donald Smith, and George Stephen – were born in Canada. Together they opened up steamboat and railroad transportation.

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.