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6/5/2005: On this date in 1843, naturalist James Audubon observed Turkey Vultures along the Missouri River between Badger Creek and the Heart River.

6/6/2005: Louis L’Amour is perhaps North Dakota’s most famous author. In his memoirs, he reflected on his early education, gained in large part from books he checked out of the Alfred Dickey Library in Jamestown. Here’s what he wrote in “Education of a Wandering Man,”

6/9/2005: The Marquis de Mores founded the town of Medora on April Fools Day, 1883, and named it for his wife, Medora von Hoffman, who was the daughter of a wealthy New York banker. The Marquis was only 25 when he arrived in the Badlands; just one year earlier, he had moved from France to work for Medora’s father on Wall Street.

6/10/2005: Tomorrow is the birthday of Frank Bennett Fiske, born in southern Dakota Territory in 1883. Frank was just a baby when his father, George, left the military and tried his hand at ranching. The drought of 1888 brought that line of work to an end, and the following spring, George and Louise Fiske moved their family to Fort Yates, where George got a job as a civilian wagon master for the Army.

3/19/2005: On this date in 1915, the Bismarck Tribune noted a prediction that North Dakota’s population would reach one million within the next two years, based on research by the Commercial Club of Grand Forks.

3/17/2005: Today is a big day for the Irish, with St. Patrick’s Day. It was also an important time in the lives of several Irish homesteaders back in the early 1900s.

3/22/2005: On this date in 1939, a former Fargo barber learned he would be hanged for his most recent wife’s murder. She was his last victim, but not his first; his first was Winona Wallace, of Fargo.

3/25/2005: Andrew Johnston was born near Taylor in Dakota Territory on this date in 1885. He grew up on his father’s Start County ranch, where he was herding some 400 cattle by himself by the age of ten. By the time he was 14, Andrew had some of his own stock, which he branded VVV – a brand he used for the rest of his life.

3/29/2005: On this date in 1935, the news in North Dakota wasn’t very cheerful. Among other things, two young women had met untimely deaths at the hands of others.

4/6/2005: The following is from Hiram. M. Drache’s excellent book, “The Challenge of the Prairie: Life and Times of Red River Pioneers”... Washing clothes was (a) woman’s chore. Cisterns were built to store a supply of soft water for washing clothes and for bathing. Often the early cisterns consisted of merely a barrel or two set at each corner of the house or nearby buildings to collect the water as it ran down from the shingled roof. In the winter time snow was melted in large tubs to provide the soft water for laundry work.