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2/26/2010: When a communicable disease strikes, one strategy is to keep it contained. And when people live in close proximity, such as on a college campus, quarantine has even been used. So in 1937, when two North Dakota boys at the Alpha Tau Omega fraternity house in Fargo were discovered to have scarlet fever, the fifteen young men who lived there were placed under an eight-day quarantine.

3/1/2010: The vast stretches of unclaimed prairie land in Dakota Territory beckoned many a hearty soul in the frontier days, and the Saunders family of Richmond, Virginia, were among these early settlers. On this date in 1886, Thomas Saunders began the journey west with his family when he was nine years old, so that his father could survey land in the Dakota Territory.

3/4/2010: On February 28, 1910, railroad giant James J. Hill was invited to address the people of Williston at a town meeting. Though the busy entrepreneur was unable to attend in person, he sent an inspiring speech to be read on his behalf. On this date in 1910, the White Earth Record printed Hill's glowing speech about North Dakota's promising future.

3/7/2010: In its prime, the first hearse belonging to the city of Hebron was somber and stately. It was decorated with carvings and draperies and tassels, and was pulled by two black horses, covered in huge black tapestries.

3/9/2010: Governor William Langer was no stranger to controversy. The crafty lawyer from Casselton not only dominated the most rancorous era of state politics, but was perhaps the most ostentatious firebrand of them all.

3/13/2010: In 1900, a young Englishman named Herbert Anderson journeyed across the Atlantic Ocean to start a new life in North America. After studying medicine at the Ontario Veterinary College in Toronto, Anderson moved to Dickinson in 1907 and set up a veterinary hospital.

3/22/2010: Today is the birthday of Louis L'Amour, one of the most prolific writers of the 20th century. His father was a large-animal veterinarian who had moved to Dakota Territory in 1882, and it was in Jamestown that Louis was born in 1908, the last of seven children.

3/20/2010: Lincoln Valley is a ghost town today, but it was once a bustling community in Sheridan County. However, there was little business being done there on this date in 1951, as the town's 75 residents were effectively snowed in-and had been for several weeks.

3/24/2010: "Mecca of Homesteaders; Thriving Villages, Prosperous Farmers." That's the headline for a story found in a late March edition of the Dickinson Press, extolling the virtues of life in Hettinger County in 1907. One has to wonder if the article was written for the locals, or for people back east, still contemplating a move out west.

3/25/2010: Many of the tales told about the early days of western North Dakota are about the rough and tumble men, and occasionally women, of the west. Cowboys and cattlemen, rustlers and outlaws. But not everyone from that era was of that nature. A letter to the editor from a 1908 early spring edition of the Dickinson Press indicates that some folks were concerned with culture and some of the finer things of life still missing in these young pioneer towns.