Search results for

2/8/2011: Around the turn of the century, businesses began handing out colored trading stamps in a marketing technique that rewarded patrons for purchasing merchandise at their stores. But really, these stamps hit their peak popularity in the fifties, with the expansion of gas stations and supermarkets.

2/9/2011: Tolna, North Dakota voted for incorporation on this date in 1907. More than half of the town’s voters approved the measure, making Tolna an official North Dakota township, and allowing for the creation of a city government. Located about twenty miles southeast of Devils Lake, Tolna was founded as a stopover for the railroad between Aneta and Devils Lake.

2/12/2011: Anti-Semitism has been around for centuries, and it appears that Territorial Governor Louis K. Church may have been guilty of it.

3/4/2011: The current state of the oil fields is a big topic in North Dakota. However, the oil boom traces it roots back to the first few decades of the 1900s. At least 23 attempts at discovering oil were made between 1924 and 1951. Plans for drilling a well on the Clarence Iverson farm south of Tioga were developed in 1946, and drilling began in the summer of 1950.

3/8/2011: The national Cowboy Hall of Fame was founded in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, in 1955…but the decision to put it there wasn’t an easy one. Many cities wanted the honor of housing the museum, which was expected to be major tourist attraction—judging by the average daily attendance of about 1200 people passing through the Will Rogers Memorial Museum in Claremore, Oklahoma.

3/12/2011: East-West rivalries in North Dakota are common in events such as hockey, but on this date in 1922, it was egg laying.

4/8/2011: It was in the month of April that the Civil War began in 1861, and 2011 marks the one-hundred-fiftieth anniversary of the war’s onset. Many of that war’s veterans would become leaders in Dakota Territory, and later, after statehood in 1889, in North Dakota.

4/9/2011: When the Homestead Bill was signed in 1861, it allowed for 160 acres of land to be claimed as long as the land was improved. Later, desert claims became available, as did tree claims, in which the land was awarded in return for planting trees. Logging claims could also be obtained in forested areas.

4/10/2011: For over twenty-five years, traders and settlers moved steadily into the Northern Plains, and on this date in 1882, Federal Census Bulletin 276 provided a breakdown of the population in Dakota Territory.

4/12/2011: For most North Dakotans of the early 20th Century, Theodore Roosevelt was considered one of their own. So, it was with great pride that President Roosevelt was received across the state as he made his way on his private railroad car from station to station on this date in 1903.