Carole Butcher

During the Spanish-American War, Theodore Roosevelt was anxious to get into the action. He raised a volunteer cavalry unit for the conflict. Famously known as the Rough Riders, Roosevelt’s volunteers served in Cuba and took part in the battle of San Juan Hill.

The United States was not prepared for a foreign war as tensions with Spain rose in 1898. Then, on February 15, 1898, the battleship Maine exploded in Havana Harbor. Two hundred sixty American sailors were killed, and war seemed inevitable.

North Dakotans are familiar with severe weather. The state is no stranger to tornadoes, hailstorms, blizzards, and floods. But geologically, North Dakota is quite stable. Since 2010, the state has recorded thirty-one earthquakes. That might sound like a lot, but by comparison, California can experience more than thirty-five earthquakes in just twenty-four hours.

The first North Dakota capitol building was completed in 1894, five years after statehood. It was destroyed by fire in the early hours of December 28, 1930. The state wasted no time beginning work on a new capitol, even selling off 160 acres of the capitol grounds to help fund construction.

When settlers arrived on the Great Plains, communication was slow. Mail was delivered by stagecoach and took days to arrive. Mail arrived faster by Pony Express than by stagecoach. Riders galloped from St. Joseph, Missouri, to Sacramento, California, making the journey in ten days. The Pony Express did not do well on the northern Great Plains. In 1860, the route ran from Grand Portage in Minnesota through Fargo and out to Medora. It came to a quick end when severe winter weather made the journey virtually impossible.

In December 1856, Henry Rice presented an enabling act to Congress that would allow Minnesota to begin the process of becoming a state. He based his proposal on Minnesota’s rapid population growth. The bill easily passed the House of Representatives, but the Senate was another story.

In 1883, Buffalo Bill’s Wild West went on tour. The show combined theater, circus, and rodeo. It was inspired by Cody’s experiences as a Pony Express rider and Army scout, and it romanticized an American West that was already disappearing. Spectators flocked to the show, which included a buffalo herd, sharpshooter Annie Oakley, and reenactments of stagecoach robberies. It also featured a band of Native Americans, including Chief Sitting Bull. The Native performers welcomed the chance to leave the reservation and return to riding, and they were paid as well as the white performers.

Colonel Dwight D. Eisenhower led the 1919 Transcontinental Motor Convoy, a venture designed to test whether military units could move across the United States using motor vehicles. The convoy crossed the Great Plains and the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific Ocean, completing the 3,251-mile journey from Washington, D.C., to San Francisco in 62 days but not without difficulty.

In 1862, Dakota Territory passed a law prohibiting food and drug adulteration. By 1885, a territory-wide board of health had been created. But public health was still lacking.

A sundog is an optical phenomenon well known in North Dakota. It often appears as a rainbow-like spot on each side of the sun. When especially bright, sundogs can look like extra suns flanking the real one, sometimes connected by a glowing halo. In rare cases, a third bright spot appears above the sun. Sundogs form in extremely cold weather, when sunlight bends as it passes through ice crystals in the atmosphere, creating bright spots and halos.