Carole Butcher

In the 1950s and 60s, as environmental concerns grew in the United States, there was increasing recognition that the National Park and National Forest systems were inadequate to safeguard wilderness areas from commercial interests. Conservationists, alarmed by the encroachment on these natural spaces, lobbied Congress for more robust protections. This movement culminated in the signing of the Wilderness Act into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson on this date in 1964.

Competition for the Great Plains was intense, as the United States, France, Spain, and Great Britain all sought its resources. Much of the early contact between the Native people and the early explorers was peaceful. The Natives brought furs to the trading posts and exchanged them for guns, tools, and food. The traders then sold the valuable furs to the European markets. The fur trade between the indigenous inhabitants and the newcomers proved to be lucrative.

As the 19th century turned into the twentieth, German immigrants found a promising home in the United States. Many of them moved to the Great Plains where they broke ground and established farms. They found a comfortable and stable home where opportunities abounded. Many German Americans rose to positions of influence. Others became successful businessmen. That changed when the United States declared war on Germany in 1917, entering World War I.

According to LaMoure County officials, the murder of Hans Bjone was one of the strangest crimes in the county’s history. Bjone was a bank official. On the afternoon of February 28, 1927, someone came into the bank, murdered Bjone, emptied the vault, and disappeared. Over three thousand dollars had gone missing. The killer left no clues, and the authorities were at a loss, but suspicion quickly fell on Francis Tucker.

In western movies and TV shows, traveling by horseback across the plains seems romantic. In reality, it was not all that pleasant. The average horse travels about five miles an hour. Travel by horse and buggy or buckboard wagon was even slower at about three miles an hour. At that rate, going from the homestead into town for supplies could be an all-day affair.

The Industrial Revolution brought sweeping economic changes in the Nineteenth Century. It began in Great Britain and spread to the rest of the world. Ordinary people saw factory owners becoming wealthy while the workers lived in poverty.

John Conrad Berkey is probably the best-known science fiction artist on the planet. His artwork appears on the covers of books, calendars and movie posters. His bold vision defined science fiction art. Berkey was born in Edgeley, North Dakota on this date in 1932. His family moved around, and as a child he lived in South Dakota, Montana, and Minnesota. He studied at the Minneapolis School of Art.

In his book about the Great Plains, Ian Frazier wrote, “A nuclear missile silo is one of the quintessential Great Plains objects: to the eye, it is almost nothing…but to the imagination, it is the end of the world.”

In 1917, there were still North Dakota veterans who remembered serving in the Civil War. Their sons had stepped up in 1898 when the 1st North Dakota Volunteer Infantry set off to serve in the Philippines during the Spanish American War. Now, with America’s entrance into World War I, it was again time for North Dakotans to serve their country. A number of them had seen service in the Philippines and volunteered again.

Over 250,000 Native Americans lived on the Great Plains in the 19th Century. While white settlers focused on taming the frontier, the indigenous inhabitants sought to maintain their hold on land they had lived on for centuries. In the 1868 Treaty of Fort Laramie, the United States recognized the Black Hills as the Great Sioux Reservation, promising to prosecute any “bad men” who committed wrongs against the Indians.