and a woman's caprice; a river that goes traveling sidewise, that
interferes in politics, rearranges geography and dabbles in real
estate; a river that plays hide-and-seek with you today, and
tomorrow follows you around like a pet dog with a dynamite cracker
tied to his tail. That river is the Missouri."
A pilot familiar with the river, and able to foresee its vagaries,
often received--and was easily worth--$1,000 a month, fabulous as that
salary may now seem.
The Red River was also a highway of traffic in the heyday of the
steamboat. Supplies were carried down it to Grand Forks, Pembina, and
Winnipeg (then Fort Garry). The steamboat could be employed only during
the summer months, however, when the river was open. During the winters
in the 1870's, messages, supplies, and mail were carried by pack
horse and dog sled. Regular mail routes were established between Fort
Abercrombie and Fort Totten, and from St. Paul to Winnipeg, by way of
Pembina.
As news of the vast untouched, wealth of the new Territory drifted back
to eastern capitalists, they turned their eyes westward. Soon survey
parties mapped the projected courses of railroads. By 1871 the Northern
Pacific Railway had been completed as far as Moorhead, Minn. The next
year it crossed the river, and in 1873 reached Bismarck, halting at
the Missouri. It was no easy task to span this treacherous river; and,
with the interruption of the panic of 1873, not until 1879 was there
any further westward extension. Construction work to the Montana border
was finished in 1881, two years before the Northern Pacific became a
transcontinental line. So great was the influence of the railroad in
bringing new settlers to Dakota that in the period from 1870 to 1875
the population of the western half of the Red River Valley doubled.
General Custer's expedition returned from the Black Hills in 1874 with
glowing tales of gold. There was a rush for the Hills, and Bismarck,
the nearest railroad terminus, became temporary headquarters for
parties leaving by stage for the gold fields. The route that Custer
had taken to the Hills from Bismarck was long known as the Territorial
Highway.
Although James J. Hill was one of the first to sponsor steamboat
traffic on the Red River, it was not until 1880 that he began building
the Great Northern Railway down the Red River Valley to Grand Forks,
and thence westward to Minot in 1887. Other lines of the Northern
Pacific and Great Northern, main and branch lines of the Minneapolis,
St. Paul & Sault Ste. Marie, and branches of other roads soon entered
the State. In order to build permanent business for their lines, they
brought in new settlers, gave special rates on household and farm
equipment, and in every way encouraged settlement. It was because of
the railroads that bonanza farming, an important phase of North Dakota
history, was introduced. The State is now served by seven railroads,
with more than 5,000 miles of trackage. The Dakota Division of the
Great Northern, with its 1,800 miles of main-line track, is the largest
railroad division in the world.
With the railroads came the telegraph lines, the first of which was
established between Winnipeg and Abercrombie, with offices at Fargo
and Grand Forks, in 1871. Soon all of the young Territory was in
communication with the outside world.
The colorful era of the steamboat had ended with the coming of the
cheaper and speedier transportation by rail, but methods of local
transportation remained unaltered. The horse still furnished the power,
although fashions in wagons and buggies might change.
It was left for the twentieth century to usher in the age of speed. In
the first decade, the wheezing steam automobile chugged with difficulty
over sticky gumbo roads in the Red River Valley, and over scoria trails
in the west. Automobiles were rare, and possession of one marked the
owner as an aristocrat or a public nuisance, according to the point of
view of the observer.
When the internal combustion motor vehicle was improved, road building
began in earnest. Bus companies, established to fill a need for north
and south transportation facilities not provided by the railroads,
opened a campaign for better roads. They were joined by an ever
increasing number of car owners, and as a result road conditions have
been steadily improved since the early 1920's.
The first bus line in the State was begun in 1922, between Bismarck
and Minot. Although the next two years saw the introduction of many
bus and truck lines, these were not regulated by State law until
placed under jurisdiction of the board of railway commissioners by
legislative act in 1925. Immediately, operating permits were required
from all companies, one of the first being granted to the Northland
Transportation Company, forerunner of the Northland Greyhound Line.
Today a network of bus and truck lines covers the State.
The airplane proved admirably suited to this part of the country. The
clear dry atmosphere afforded ideal flying conditions, and almost
every part of the State was suitable for landing fields, even without
improvement. Municipalities became interested in the new mode of
transportation, hangars were built, and runways laid out. Now all of
the larger cities and towns have airports, and almost every small town
has its landing field. Private planes are found at the airports, and
here and there ships are seen on farms, where mechanically minded lads
pilot them in leisure hours for their own pleasure. All planes and
pilots must be licensed under a State law of 1929, as well as conform
to the regulations of the Department of Commerce.
Cheering crowds at Fargo, Grand Forks, and Pembina greeted the
pilots of the first air mail between the Twin Cities and Winnipeg in
1928. Hundreds of letters and cards were carried on this flight for
collectors who desired copies of the special commemorative cancellation
stamp. North Dakotans' air mail letters now reach Washington, D. C. or
Los Angeles 12 hours after mailing. Daily service on the original line
is still maintained, and two other regular lines have been extended
into the State, one between Chicago and Seattle which stops at Fargo
and Bismarck, the other from Bismarck to Tulsa, Okla.
Transportation has advanced with amazing rapidity since the Territory
of Dakota was organized in 1861. Nevertheless, a severe winter such as
that of 1935-36 is capable of halting communication almost completely.
But even then, with automobile traffic at a standstill because of
blocked roads, trains delayed because of mountainous snowdrifts, and
planes grounded because snow and ice made landing too hazardous, the
radio still kept the State in constant touch with the outside world.
THE PRESS AND RADIO
Whether or not the first printing press in North Dakota, brought to
St. Joseph (Walhalla) by Rev. Alonzo Barnard in 1848, was ever used in
the State is a matter of conjecture. When Mr. Barnard, a Presbyterian
minister, was transferred to Dakota, he took his press--a gift from
students at Oberlin College--overland from the Cass Lake (Minnesota)
Reservation to Red Lake, by canoe across the lake and down the Red Lake
and Red Rivers to Pembina, then by oxcart to St. Joe. Here he may have
used it, as he did in Minnesota, to publish news letters and pamphlets
for his parishioners, but nothing printed on it in North Dakota has
been preserved.
The first North Dakota publication was probably the _Frontier Scout_,
a short-lived four-page, three-column sheet which made its appearance
at Fort Union in July 1864. In the following year its successor, the
_Pioneer Scout_, was issued at Fort Rice and, according to its editors,
"published weekly by the First U. S. V. Infantry for the edification
of the people of Dacotah, both civilized and savage; and as 'green'
spots and 'green' backs are so few, we will not mention terms, but bid
it, like the grace of God, go free." The editors further declared that
"every article in this paper is original and sees the light of day for
the first time."
Journalistic activity lapsed subsequent to these military literary
efforts, and was not revived until the railroad and the resultant
influx of settlers in 1872 brought the new Territory to the attention
of Minnesota editors. Col. Clement A. Lounsberry, sent by the
Minneapolis _Tribune_ to cover colonization in the Fargo area, went
on to Bismarck where, on July 11, 1873, the first number of his own
paper, the Bismarck _Tribune_, appeared. First a weekly and later a
daily, it has been published continuously since that time, missing only
one edition, and on that occasion newsboys distributed hastily printed
handbills containing formal notice that the _Tribune_ plant had been
destroyed by fire (_see_ BISMARCK).
Early journalism in the Fargo area was stimulated by the offer of the
Wells-Fargo Express Company to give a cash bonus for a paper appearing
under the name of the Fargo _Express_. First and unsuccessful bidder
for the bonus was a sheet bearing the correct name, but printed at
Glyndon, Minn. The prize was awarded in 1874 to a Fargo-printed
publication. Between 1874 and 1891 several other papers were issued, to
be merged finally in the Fargo _Forum_ in 1891.
In 1874 the Grand Forks _Plaindealer_ was founded; five years later
the _Herald_ was also in the field, and eventually absorbed the
_Plaindealer_ (_see_ GRAND FORKS).
With the beginning of settlement newspapers sprang up quickly in the
other new towns of Dakota, so that when North Dakota was admitted to
the Union in 1889, it had 125 periodicals. Many so-called newspapers
were nothing more than a final proof-sheet, printed in order that
settlers might comply with the homesteading law which required
publication of notice of final claim. The cost of establishing such
a paper was slight. Official notices, an occasional advertisement,
and a few local news items were all it contained. If the editor could
win the favor of the United States Land Office registrar, who usually
designated the official paper, he might obtain one hundred or more
notices an issue; these at $5 each made his income quite substantial.
Often the paper was short-lived, but the editor usually remained in the
State, setting up his type cases and presses in some promising small
town and starting an actual weekly paper. Many villages had two or
more rival papers for a time, and the number of publications increased
rapidly; in 1904 there were 265 in the State, and in 1919 a high of 336
was reached. The weekly papers were widely read and often had great
political influence.
Improved transportation facilities, however, led to the retreat of
the weeklies before the increasing circulation of the daily papers.
North Dakota now has 196 publications including 11 dailies and 4 trade
journals.
Always active in the political life of the State, the newspapers have
been an especially important factor in the Nonpartisan League fight.
With the daily press usually unanimously opposed to its program, the
league has purchased weeklies through which it has exercised a great
influence on the rural population. Although it does not control as many
weeklies now as it formerly did, it still has a strong hand in the
editorial policies of many papers in the State.
In May 1922, less than two years after the first radio broadcast in
the United States had been put on the air by KDKA in Pittsburgh, WDAY
of Fargo presented the first commercial broadcast in North Dakota. The
State now has seven other stations, situated in Bismarck, Grand Forks,
Minot, Devils Lake, Mandan, Valley City, and Jamestown.
KFJM in Grand Forks is one of the few stations in the United States
owned by a State university. It is leased to private operators with
the provision that its facilities be at the disposal of the school for
special broadcasts and experimental work (_see_ GRAND FORKS).
The radio has made an important contribution to the State service by
broadcasting information on weather conditions whenever necessary.
Lives and thousands of dollars in property have been saved by warnings
of spring floods. During the winter months frequent weather and highway
reports are given, and warnings sent out regarding advisability of
sending children to school during storms or extremely cold weather.
In November 1930 an unusual service was performed by the Fargo and
Bismarck stations. Heavy coatings of sleet had broken down telephone
and telegraph wires throughout the State, and severed all communication
between Fargo and Jamestown, division points on the Northern Pacific.
During the first afternoon of the storm short-wave communication
was established between the Fargo transmitter and an amateur set at
Jamestown, but after sunset interference forced abandonment of this
broadcast. Receiving sets were quickly installed at the studios of the
Fargo and Bismarck stations, making possible a two-way conversation. On
the one available telephone connection between Jamestown and Bismarck
the dispatchers' office in Jamestown was hooked up with the Bismarck
studio, in Fargo the dispatcher was linked with WDAY, and for two days
all trains on the line were dispatched by radio. Between train orders
the facilities of both stations were turned over to the telegraph
offices, and Fargo alone sent out more than 200 messages.
Several amateur stations were in operation before any commercial
broadcasting had been done in North Dakota. When the convention of the
Dakota Division of the American Radio Relay League was held in Fargo in
1936, there were 300 licensed operators in attendance, and each year
finds an increased number of people selecting short-wave broadcasting
as a hobby.
ARCHITECTURE
The buildings of North Dakota cling closely to the low, tranquil
landscape of the State, avoiding exposure to the cold northwest winds
that sweep across the snowy prairie in winter. Farms and towns huddle
in valleys or hug the open plain, and only grain elevators dare to
break the comfortable horizontality of the prevailing contours. In the
few cities a tendency can be noted toward height in buildings, but the
number of skyscrapers in North Dakota can be counted on the fingers of
one hand.
Despite this relatively small number one skyscraper, the State Capitol
(designed by Joseph B. DeRemer and William F. Kurke, and Holabird
and Root, associates), has aroused more interest and comment than
any other building in the history of the State. This interest has
not been confined to the borders of North Dakota, for the "slender
shaft of modernity" which dominates the Bismarck skyline represents
a trend in the architecture of State capitols that is gaining the
attention of the entire Nation. Because the basic reasons for the
skyscraper--exaggerated land values and proximity to transportation
centers--are utterly lacking in this capacious prairie State, much
criticism has been directed at the type of statehouse chosen.
Nevertheless the point is made that the character and purpose of the
building as the seat of State government are well expressed in the
impressive height and dignity of its lines, while at the same time the
structure is decidedly utilitarian. (_See_ BISMARCK.)
Utilitarianism characterized the architecture of this region before
even the earliest white explorations took place. When Verendrye
visited the Mandan Indians along the Missouri in 1738 he found them
living in well-built lodges made of earth packed over a framework of
logs, comfortably cool in summer and warm in winter. The lodge was
constructed of native materials and suited the settled agricultural
life of the Mandans. In the same way the easily moved skin tipi of
the nomadic Sioux whom the early explorers found to the east of the
Missouri was well suited to their wandering mode of life.
The fur traders were the first white people to build in this region,
and, like the Indians, they made use of native materials. Their posts,
usually on the rivers where timber was available, were rough affairs of
untrimmed logs, roofed with dirt laid over a timber framework, with
the earth for a floor. Like the Indians of the Missouri Valley, the
traders put up log stockades around their posts to ward off attacks of
hostile natives.
The settlers who followed the traders into this country also made use
of the trees which grew along the streams, but as settlement began
to penetrate the unforested interior of the State the earth itself
provided building material for frontier homes. A furrow some three
inches deep was plowed into a tough sod containing many grass roots,
and the broken sod was cut into lengths the width of the wall, up to
two and a half feet. One row of blocks was laid lengthwise of the
wall and the next crosswise, with the joints staggered as in laying
bricks. The finished wall provided a strong, thick barrier against
summer heat and winter cold. The roof, like that of many log houses,
was of poles covered with brush, often finished with overlapping strips
of sod. Sometimes these sod roofs actually bloomed in the spring as
their many roots came to life, and one pioneer told of the small poles
which formed the framework of his roof leafing out inside the house in
midwinter.
Improved transportation brought lumber into North Dakota, and frame
shanties and houses were built. The red barn took a prominent place
on the farm, and the silo, for storing fodder, reared its vertical
mass, sometimes dwarfing even the windmill its revolving silvery fins.
Except for the more affluent farms, where the homes sometimes boasted
as many as 12 rooms and a porch, the farmhouses followed an uninspired
cycle of rectangular or L-shaped frame structures, often with a lean-to
shed at the back for storing wood or coal. On Russo-German farms in
the southern and western parts of the State a European love of color
asserted itself as houses were painted sky blue or nile green or pink,
and color combinations such as red, white, and blue formed a pattern of
diagonal stripes on the barn or granary door.
In each township appeared the one-room country school, usually white or
light green in color, with its three windows on each side, coal shed
and door in one end, chimney and black board in the other, and possibly
a bell tower over the door. The early school was not only a seat of
learning, it was also the community center, where a Saturday night
basket social might be followed by church services the next morning.
As the stories of rich land and the lure of the frontier brought more
people to this region, small towns grew up on the prairie, most of
them consisting of one business street and a few residential streets.
Along the wooden sidewalks of Main Street the false-front building
predominated, its frame facade rising a half story or more above its
roof. The motive for constructing the false-front building may have
been to provide space for a sign, or it may have been merely to "put on
front" literally as well as figuratively. Often the sole brick building
in the young North Dakota town housed the bank, and the hotel could be
easily identified by its porches. Near the railroad track was the long
gable roof depot of dark red, dark green, or yellow trimmed in red. The
school was a boxlike white frame structure topped with a bell tower,
and every town had at least one rectangular, white, gable roof church
with windows in either side and a steeple and bell on the entrance
facade. Residences varied from tar-paper shanties to the ornate,
gabled, towered mansion of the eighties.
Dominating the silhouette of these little villages were the grain
elevators, those bright sentinels which symbolized the reason for the
towns' founding, and still remain the most typical buildings in the
North Dakota picture today. Like tall men standing head and shoulders
above a crowd, they rise 60 to 70 feet above the low prairie. First
glimpsed as any town comes into sight is the row of wedge-shaped
cupolas, like arrowheads in profile, topping the almost square red,
green, or maroon shafts. On the side opposite the railroad track,
along which the elevators are lined, each building has its one-story
scalehouse, where the trucks and wagons dump their loads of grain. A
few feet from the scalehouse is the small rectangular power house and
office building.
As towns have prospered, brick buildings have come into use in the
business sections, and new homes of bungalow, Colonial, old English,
Spanish, and other modified styles have been built. Leaving behind the
era of metal fronts, towers, and domes, public buildings are emerging
in neoclassic, Gothic, Colonial, and modern architecture. The little
white churches have given way in many instances to stone and brick
structures varying in design from Gothic to modern, the United Lutheran
Church in Grand Forks being an example of the latter. The schools have
shown perhaps the greatest development of any type of building, and
most towns now have well-designed modern schools which often serve as
community centers.
Native building materials are becoming more popular in North Dakota,
and each year an increasing amount of construction utilizes native-made
brick and locally quarried sandstone. An interesting development in
the use of native materials is the rammed-earth building, the walls
of which consist of earth tamped until it is hard as rock. A house
and garage of this construction erected on the Scoria Lily ranch near
Hettinger (_see Tour 9_), because of their unusually low building
cost, have attracted wide attention. The use of native boulders as a
building material is well illustrated in the Cairn, home of Mr. and
Mrs. Clell G. Gannon in Bismarck.
Even with these attempts there is no native North Dakota architecture.
The schools, farms, grain elevators, and false-front business buildings
are common to the entire Midwest. Many of these, although old, do not
mellow, but have an air of impermanence, as though intended to serve
only until something better came along. A few houses, on the other
hand, follow the good, substantial precedent of the older Eastern homes
of the country. New buildings which go up represent a variety of forms,
a constant flux in ideas.
As evinced by buildings ranging from statehouse to filling stations,
North Dakota is architecturally in an irresolute frame of mind,
striving, willing to try anything suggested, yet unable, to date, to
evolve from these many trials a distinctive architectural contribution
of its own.
RECREATION
North Dakota offers many diverse forms of recreation among scenes
varying from the spectacle of the fantastically carved Badlands to the
severe beauty of the far reaching prairies. The Badlands are probably
the best known recreation area of the State. Here the two Roosevelt
Regional State Parks have been set aside, and many miles of bridle
paths and automobile roads are being built. The strangely colored
buttes form one of the most unusual scenic and geologic areas in the
United States, and contain endless treasures of petrified wood and
fossils of prehistoric plant and animal life.
More conventional is the beauty of the wooded Turtle Mountains, where
many attractive lakes provide swimming, fishing, and boating. In the
woods are countless varieties of wild flowers, and many species of song
birds. Of the many lakes in the Turtle Mountains, the largest and best
known are Metigoshe in the northwest part of the hills and Upsilon in
the east. Here well-equipped resorts have been established for the
accommodation of summer visitors.
Lakes are scattered through the region south of the Turtle Mountains,
and provide the main source of summer recreation in that area. Devils
Lake, formerly the principal resort in the State, still attracts
many visitors each year; and other lakes, especially Spiritwood near
Jamestown, are becoming popular. Some North Dakota lakes offer good
fishing, being stocked with pike, crappies, sunfish, black bass, and
rock bass. The rivers also yield pike, perch, and sunfish, as well as
catfish and pickerel.