Search results for

10/25/2012: In 1870, Alexander Griggs and James J. Hill conceived the idea of launching their own riverboat as a means of shipping goods along the Red River. With an investment of $5,000.00 they built the Selkirk. It was a sternwheeler, designed to navigate the narrow channels of the Red. It was estimated by the Grand Forks Plaindealer newspaper that during the seventeen years it operated, the Selkirk earned over five hundred thousand dollars.

10/26/2012: TIME Magazine reported on the 1942 North Dakota harvest on this date seventy years ago. What made the harvest that fall unique enough to be reported in the pages of TIME, Life, and Newsweek magazines? Well, in addition to its enormous size, the entire harvest was completed not by farmers, but largely by college students, football players, and professors.

10/27/2012:The current, familiar tower of the Capitol in Bismarck replaced the original Capitol after it burned down in 1930. However, on this date in 1953, the Devils Lake Journal reported that the building’s innards needed help again.

10/30/2012: They were called soiled doves, fallen angels and scarlet women. In the early days of statehood, these monikers referred to the women who plied the trade of prostitution. And during the waning years of the 19th century, that trade was prosperous, conflicted, and deadly in the streets of Fargo.

11/3/2012: North Dakota came into the Union in 1889 as a dry state, so it was not until the end of federal prohibition that alcohol was allowed.

11/9/2012: World War I was a modern war with new and deadly weapons systems including tanks, submarines, and poison gas. In 1915,Germany first used poison gas, or the “Frightfulness” as it was called, to push back Canadian troops in Belgium. The best protection against this terror-weapon was a gas mask.

11/14/2012: Prior to the implementation of stricter health regulations, the butchering of animals for meat was often done in scattered shops that reeked from the discarded organic and liquid waste from the processing of the carcasses. Some cities confined the entire butchering to a specific district of the city.

11/15/2012: Emmons County was organized in November of 1883. Thousands of German-Russians immigrated to the area around Eureka, now in South Dakota, and then spread out from there. As a result, a large portion of Emmons County was settled by these people who had fled their homeland to escape political persecution. They were suspicious of politics and politicians and tended to stick together when it came to making decisions. So it was important for political candidates to gain the confidence of the leaders of the German-Russian community – or was there another way?

11/17/2012: After Mr. Curtis Dirlam and Miss Hulda Bergstrom exchanged vows in Bismarck on this date in 1920, they thought packing for their honeymoon marked the end of the celebration ... until they got to Curtis's driveway.

11/18/2012: When commenting on the lowly potato, W. D. Bates, editor of the Grafton News & Time, stated that it was “only a potato, but next to wheat the most important human food.”