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4/8/2013: Recent events relating to the relationship between NDSU and the state’s Board of Higher Education have thrown a spotlight on earlier turbulent events in the school’s history. The ‘Purge of ‘37’ has been revisited the most often, a time when the school, then called the North Dakota Agricultural College, lost its accreditation, and the accreditation of the University of North Dakota in Grand Forks was also threatened. During the infamous purge, Governor William Langer unjustly fired seven popular faculty members.

4/10/2013: Surely April is a month of great duality in the state of North Dakota; after a long winter, residents are relieved to see the first signs of spring, but, unfortunately, these signs often include spring flooding. One of the worst floods on record occurred during the spring of 1897; the flood was so great, and the damage so terrible, that it was used as the “measure of other Red River floods” for decades after.

4/15/2013: After an absence of over three years, the last of the state agencies returned to Capitol Hill. On this date in 1934, the office of the Secretary of State was moving into the new State Capitol Building. Only the Governor’s Office remained in the downtown area of Bismarck, housed in the Memorial Building.

4/19/2013: Nobody knows exactly when Gus Johnson disappeared. But in early April of 1908, his neighbors became suspicious when his hired man showed up in Kenmare to sell a wagon-load of the farmer’s grain.

4/21/2013: On this date in 1928, the city of Grand Forks prepared to retire a “good patrolman”—Brandy, a bull dog.

4/24/2013: On a cool but sunny March morning in 1944, schoolteacher Pauline Rebel was preparing the one-room Wild Plum School House, 20 miles south of Richardton, North Dakota, for the arrival of her eight students. It appeared to be a day like any other, but after the students arrived, strange things began to happen.

5/10/2013: John Louis Clarke was born on this date in 1881 in Highwood, Montana. Considered one of the “most under-appreciated artists” of our time, Clarke’s work would end up in galleries from Chicago to London, and even grace the walls of magnate John D. Rockefeller. Although he worked in several media, he became best known for his wood-carvings; few today realize, however, that he first learned wood-carving in Devils Lake, at the North Dakota School for the Deaf.

5/13/2013: Always the most fashionable neighborhood in Grand Forks, Reeves Drive was home for the leaders and financiers of the community. The street had been named for D. P. Reeves, builder of steamboats in the 1870s. By 1899, Reeves Drive was the address of six bankers, four lawyers, and three businessmen. Most of the Reeves Drive people were from prominent New England or Scandinavian families, others had invented Cream of Wheat cereal.

5/16/2013: On this date in 1934, people were talking about a family in McKenzie County that had a chance encounter with some bandits, and earned themselves a bit of good advice.

5/21/2013: Steamboats operating on the Missouri River were a key element in advancing the frontier westward. Manufactured goods could be shipped to St. Louis, transferred to smaller steamboats and then freighted up river as far as Fort Benton, Montana. Freighters then hauled the goods from that point to the miners. Military posts along the river also needed supplies – thousands of tons each year to sustain the troops through the often brutal winters when almost all travel ceased on the Northern Plains.