10/30/2011:
On this date in 1873, Mark Twain was on an ocean cruise. 22 years later, he saw another ocean that impressed America's favorite writer – a sea of grain in the Red River Valley.
At a speaking tour train stop in Grand Forks, Twain spoke with a Grand Forks Herald reporter. Here's Twain: "This country of yours astonished me beyond all imagination. Never in my life have I seen such fields of grain extending in all directions to the horizon. My conception of it is the same as that of a man who has never seen the ocean before, he sees nothing but water as far as the eye can reach; here I see nothing but oceans of wheat fields. Why, it is simply miraculous.”
An ocean of praise from Mark Twain.
Dakota Datebook written by Steve Stark
Source:
(Minnesota Historical Society) http://collections.mnhs.org