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6/27/2012: Statuary Hall in the U.S. Capitol was established in 1862 to celebrate individuals who reflect historic renown or distinguished service in their state’s history. Long before the well-known statue of Sacagawea was enshrined in the Hall in 2003, the first North Dakotan selected was Governor “Honest” John Burke. Burke was a reform-minded governor who also became the U.S. Secretary of the Treasury.

7/17/2012: Mandan’s slogan, “Where the West begins” was especially true in the late 1880s. Cattle thrived on the tall grass prairie that stretched for hundreds of miles to the west. Towns such as Dickinson and Medora became railheads for beef fattened on the open range. And with these towns and ranches came the cowboy. Long, sinuous lines of longhorn cattle wound their way up from Texas, driven by hardened, seasoned trail hands. For several decades, these rugged individuals battled hostile Indians, rustlers, lack of water and the elements to move the vast herds north to the Dakotas, Wyoming and Montana.

7/19/2012: On September 16, 1940, President Franklin Roosevelt implemented the first peacetime draft in history, known as the Selective Training and Service Act of 1940. The following year, after the bombing of Pearl Harbor by the Japanese, the United States was at war. Thousands of young men rushed to the recruitment centers and joined the Armed Forces, but after the excitement wore off and they realized this would be a long and bloody involvement, enlistment fell well below the demand.

7/26/2012: General Alfred Sully and a large contingent of troops departed from the Heart River of western North Dakota on this date in 1864, leaving behind a few hundred emigrants and several hundred soldiers as protection. Sully’s troops headed north to confront a village of Sioux that scouts had reported in the Killdeer Mountains. The place the emigrants were left is known today as the Heart River Corral, a North Dakota State Historical Site fourteen miles southeast of Richardton.

7/27/2012: The first inmates of the new Bismarck penitentiary arrived from Sioux Falls on this date in 1885. The thirty-five men were transferred from the Dakota Territory Prison, which had become overcrowded in the four years since it was built in 1881.

8/2/2012: Captain James Fisk’s last and largest western expedition reached Fort Union on this date in 1866. A week behind schedule, the party of five hundred was happy to have reached the Montana border without any major catastrophes. Fisk’s fourth expedition also proved his most successful. The previous three, sanctioned by the U.S. Army, had been marred with difficulty. The 1864 party had been attacked by Sitting Bull and the Hunkpapa Sioux and had to be ‘rescued’ and escorted back to Fort Rice by General Sully.

8/4/2012: Have you wondered why North Dakota has so few trees? According to legend, Paul Bunyan and Babe, his big blue ox, wandered west from his logging camp in Minnesota one day.

8/7/2012: As hyperbolic newspaper headlines go, this was a doozy. It even took precedence over the electrifying stories about Nazi threats and Russian and Japanese military attacks. Readers of the daily Jamestown Sun on August 7, 1941 were greeted with a top-of-the-fold, bold face headline in capital letters screaming: BUBONIC PLAGUE FOUND IN NORTH DAKOTA.

8/9/2012: Golf was in the air on this date in 1933, as the golf course in Belfield was under repair, and the golf club, which had recently started up again, needed more members to help cover the expenses. The secretary of the club tried to get a Scottish friend to become a member. The man said he would be happy to join, but he had lost his golf ball on the course in Beach some six years prior. He claimed he would join if someone found the ball. The Belfield Review newspaper published this item, and the club began the search.

8/10/2012: Gambling goes back to ancient times, but in the State of North Dakota it only goes back to 1976. Previously, an amendment to the State Constitution in November of 1894 had banned any form of gambling. Of course that doesn’t mean that there wasn’t any gambling in the state. Raffles as well as other games of chance were openly played, but only for the benefit of a charity. Law enforcement looked the other way and were occasionally even the beneficiaries of games of chance. Then in 1976, voters formally approved the practice, allowing nonprofit clubs and organizations to play games of chance for public spirited purposes.