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9/29/2008: If you were listening earlier this month, you heard tales of the boys of North Dakota’s First Infantry, returning from fighting in the Philippine Insurrection in 1899. The government had given the boys the option of being mustered out of San Francisco or from North Dakota, but if they were mustered out of San Francisco, they had a chance of keeping more money upon their return. They opted for San Francisco, and were there for a good few weeks. However, on this day, they were on a train, in the midst of a five-day journey, begun on the 26th, taking them home to Dakota.

9/30/2008: The town of Medora was founded in 1883 and named by the Marquis de Morse for his beloved wife. They brought with them the airs of the European aristocracy. When the Chateau, with its 26 rooms, was completed, it was the source of many social occasions for the family and wealthy visitors.

10/1/2008: “An act to provide for the division of Dakota into two States and to enable the people of North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, and Washington to form constitutions and State governments and to be admitted into the Union on an equal footing with the original States.” Thus read the Enabling Act of 1889, approved by the Fiftieth Congress on February 22, of that year. It set into motion the final division of Dakota Territory into two separate states as well as the creation of Montana and Washington.

10/3/2008: Long has lived the immortal poem Paul Revere’s Ride. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s words have been memorized by school children across the country; memorized by reluctant school children perhaps, but remembered all the same. The poem conjures visions of desperation as America took its first steps towards independence from King George and Great Britain’s unjust taxation. It tells of the heroics of our first patriots as they fought the feared ‘redcoat’ soldiers in their fields and their towns. And none of it has anything to do with North Dakota; well not necessarily.

10/4/2008: They say that when life hands you a lemon, you make lemonade. According to the Forum and Daily Republican newspaper, on this day in 1907, young Jurgen Bolum, from Portal, "got a lemon" through a "Foxy Minneapolis girl" he thought was a peach.

10/5/2008: Credit for founding the town of Hazen is linked to two different people.

10/9/2008: There were few men from Northern Dakota Territory who saw service in the Union and Confederate battles of the Civil War but the years from 1862 to 1864 constituted a significant military presence on the plains of Dakota. On the 18th of August, 1862 hostilities broke out at the Upper Sioux Agency on the Yellow Medicine River in Minnesota.

10/10/2008: Bands of Minnesota Sioux had joined the western Sioux bands or had gone to Devils Lake in late 1862. The Sibley Expedition left Fort Snelling in the summer of 1863 and traveled across the central part of the area, engaging in battles at Big Mound, Dead Buffalo Lake, Stoney Lake and a number of running engagements to the Missouri River. General Alfred Sully also engaged in the Battle of Whitestone Hill in 1863 and made another expedition west of the Missouri in 1864 fighting at the Battle of the Killdeer Mountains.

10/13/2008: “September 25 was an eventful day for the N. D. volunteers,” recalled John Kinne, “we were mustered out for the last time….We bought our railroad tickets home, paid our debts…bid farewell to camp and left for the city, free men.”

10/14/2008: Students in North Dakota have, throughout decades past, been subject to the changing of seasons in an agricultural state. Different farm-related chores sometimes took precedent over the classroom. You, dear listener, may have a parent or grandparent who was finished with school by the time they were twelve or fourteen. And it didn’t just happen here; it happened across the country.