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3/24/2014: When Arthur C. Mellette was confirmed by the US Senate on March 12, 1889 he became Dakota Territory’s tenth and last governor.

11/23/2012: There’s an old saying that North Dakota was built by wheat and railroads, and there is a significant amount of truth to it. By 1887, two transcontinental railroads had completed their tracks across what is now North Dakota. Minot, Mandan, Grand Forks and Fargo served as railroad hubs, with products flowing through them from east to west. However, these main lines were often too distant for farmers to easily haul their grain, wool, eggs and other produce to the Great Northern and the Northern Pacific Railheads. Consequently, smaller commercial ventures attempted to meet the need.

11/22/2012: Today is Thanksgiving. Long before Thanksgiving was celebrated in 1621 at Plymouth, Massachusetts, various harvest festivals were popular as a religious holiday or as a day to celebrate a successful growing season. But over time it also became a time to reflect on the past year and to give thanks for all the good things that occurred during the year. President George Washington issued the first proclamation for a national Thanksgiving in 1789 and one hundred years later Governor John Miller issued the first proclamation for the State of North Dakota.

11/27/2012: In February of 1941, the 164 Regiment of the North Dakota National Guard was called up in preparation for a United States involvement in the global conflict. When they reported to Camp Claiborne in Louisiana, little did they know that it would be more than four years before they saw their homes again. Pearl Harbor was bombed on December 7, and they were transferred to the West Coast and then on to New Caledonia for five months of training. They were combined with other units and given the name, the Americal Division – coined by combining America with Caledonia.

11/28/2012: House Bill 52 of the 1947 Legislative Session established a State Health Department consisting of a State Health Council, a State Health Officer and Division Directors. Until this time, county health officers oversaw most of the hospitals, clinics and related programs. In the populated eastern counties, the cost of running the County Health Office was easier to absorb, but western counties struggled with the load. One important aspect of House Bill 52, was that it allowed the State Health Department to promote local health services as it saw fit, which allowed the combination of less populated counties into one health district funded by the counties as well as the state and federal governments.

11/29/2012: From 1887 to 1891, Bean Siding was an obscure little town three miles south of Gilby, North Dakota. It was named after S.S. Bean, who built an elevator on the Northern Pacific Railroad there. In 1892 the new postmaster, William Honeyford, renamed the town after himself. It reached a peak population of 75 in 1920, and only two people live there today.

11/30/2012: On October 2, 1882, the Sioux Commission was formed with Judge P. C. Shannon and Governor Newton Edmunds of Yankton, Dakota Territory; J. H. Teller of Cleveland, Ohio; and the Reverend S. D. Hinman of the Indian Bureau at Washington, D.C. The four commissioners visited the five agencies on the Great Sioux Reservation to divide it into smaller tracts of land, setting up individual reservations for the various bands of the Sioux living there.

12/3/2012: On this date in 1909, Charles and Catherine Vanourny had been married only a day, but it’s unlikely they were honeymooning. They were, after all, frugal, hard-working Germans from Russia. A 31-year-old widower, Charles had homesteaded his 160-acre farm southeast of Ashley. His new 25-year-old bride, Catherine Geiszler, had the distinction of being the first girl born in McIntosh County.

12/7/2012: The illegal purveyance of alcohol played a significant part in the first forty-five years of North Dakota’s history. The court dockets were filled with rum runners and moonshiners. Multitudes of ingenious stills, such one cleverly hidden in a room dug under a pig sty, provided extra income for cash-strapped farmers during the dry years. Canadian whiskey slipped into the state hidden under the floorboards or in the trunks of powerful cars that were designed to out run the law. Lawmen such as Dana Wright carried Thompson machine guns, and running firefights took place on the back roads of North Dakota.

12/8/2012: When the snow piles up, you can wait for the plows, or you can jump on your snowmobile. The sleek modern machines will take you just about anywhere on the snow.