Fargo, ND to Billings, MT (I-94)
The final push across the plains home to Billings begins when I cross the Red River from Morehead, MN and enter Fargo, ND. Fargo is by far the largest city in North Dakota as well as one of the fastest growing cities in the United States with nearly a quarter of a million people in the metropolitan area. The story of the northern Great Plains is the story of the expansion of the railroads west after the Civil War. Fargo was founded in 1871 on the west bank of the Red River where the Northern Pacific Railroad built a crossing. Homesteaders flooded the area, rapidly settling in the rich agricultural lands of the Red River Valley. Again, as we have frequently heard in the settling of the west, fire shaped the early history of the town. In 1893 a disastrous fire destroyed downtown Fargo but it was quickly rebuilt and many of those buildings stand today. Also as we saw in Grand Forks to the north, floods have impacted the city center here, the latest in 2009. The riverfront along the city center is under construction as a new flood wall is being completed with the first major line of buildings now two blocks back from the river.
Street corners are marked with mosaics embedded in the sidewalks.
No visit to Fargo is complete without a visit to the “Holy Grail” of North Dakota, the revered Fargodome, home of the North Dakota State Bison football team, arguably the most successful college football team in the nation, having won 13 national championships and 32 conference championships.
Heading west on I-94 my next stop is the town of Jamestown, home of the National Buffalo Museum.
Jamestown, ND
Jamestown is nestled in the valley created by the wandering James River. Jamestown was founded in 1871 as a railroad stop where the Northern Pacific Railroad built a bridge over the James River. A year later the US Army built Fort Seward on a bluff north of the river.
The skyline is marked by the towers of the Catholic Church and a couple of “prairie skyscrapers”, grain elevators along the railroad.
Today a small city home to approximately 16,000 people Jamestown as long been a stable center for small manufacturing and business servicing the surrounding agricultural community. The city center is a mix of small buildings from the early 1900’s.
On a corner block in the city center an art installation is in the process of being created as an homage to the surrounding prairie.
Rising on a bluff along I-94 south of town is Frontier Village (a “tourist trap” type frontier recreation) and the National Buffalo Museum ( connected but not “touristy” at all, a small non-descript building housing a lot of interesting stuff). You have to go through Frontier Village to get to the National Buffalo Museum. The road is intended to resemble the main street of a North Dakota frontier town. It’s after the season and so they are closed, but most just seem to house tourist businesses. There are better, more historically authentic frontier town recreations to visit elsewhere in the state.
The real draw is the National Buffalo Museum and its’ resident buffalo herd which contains a rare while buffalo, revered by Native Americans for its spiritual significance. At one time nearly 40 million buffalo roamed the northern plains of America in huge herds with their own territory. The buffalo roamed in a roughly circular pattern from north to south, primarily staying with their home group. This map shows the approximately patterns of the two large groups in the northern U.S., the Saskatchewan herd on the left and the Red River herd on the right.
The buffalo is much more suited to life on the plains than a cow. Cows are slightly smaller than a buffalo but require more food on a daily basis for survival. A buffalo in general requires about 30 pounds of food per day while a cow needs about 5-8 pounds more and a buffalo only requires water every 3-4 days. On this very chilly fall windy morning the resident buffalo herd is smarter than I am. They are huddled down in a heavily wooded creek bed and out of sight, I will have to be content with looking at preserved specimens within the museum…
The extremely rare white buffalo (so rare that odds of it’s’ existence can’t even be calculated!) had great spiritual significance to Native Americas, symbolizing peace, unity and hope.
Buffalo were virtually defenseless against hunters using rifles and were quickly decimated by roving groups of hunters who killed tremendous numbers of buffalo in a single day, primarily for their hides. Hides were used in the production of robes and other protective gear. This display case holds a robe, protective face mask (used to protect the face from the frigid winds and below freezing temperatures of winter on the plains), and gloves.
The Western Sioux tried to save the buffalo by herding them towards lands to the north but the defeat of the Native Americans after the Battle of the Little Big Horn in 1876 left the herds defenseless to the hunters. This pictures shows bundles of buffalo hides stacked along the railroad track in Dickinson, ND in 1883 waiting shipment east By 1889 only 541 buffalo were left in the United States.
With the passing of the live buffalo and the end of the trade in hides a new industry arose which used the bones of the animals for industrial purposes. Bones were used for industrial carbon and fertilizer. Tremendous quantities of bones were retrieved from the plains and shipped east. This is a picture of a pile of buffalo skulls at the Detroit Carbon Works in Detroit, Michigan. Skulls were processed into charcoal and used in the refining of sugar. By 1894 the Detroit Carbon Works was the largest industry in Detroit, producing over 20,000 tons of fertilizer a year as well as chemical by-products and glue. (Who knew?)
The decimation of the buffalo was recognized as a nation issue and in 1894 President Grover Cleveland signed a federal order protecting the buffalo. By 1905 the private American Buffalo Society had established private buffalo ranges through the United States. Perhaps the most significant attempt occurred in northwestern Montana where a member of the Flathead Indian tribe, Walking Coyote, rescued six buffalo calves and raised them. Those six calves proved to be the nucleus of the survival of the buffalo across the United States and Canada. Looking east off the observation deck the “World’s Largest Buffalo” rises on a knoll, framed by the rolling North Dakota prairie in the distance.
The road west to Bismarck threads through classic North Dakota farming country: rolling hills and gentle swales filled with water. The few trees are generally windbreaks clustered around farm complexes or in long rows protecting cropland from the ever present North Dakota wind.
Our next stop is Bismarck, capital of the state of North Dakota.
Bismarck, ND
Bismarck was founded above the east bank of the Missouri River in 1872 as a railroad stop on the Northern Pacific as it was creeping west across the prairie. The area had been settled by Native Americans for hundreds of years with extensive villages of the Mandan Tribe spreading across the west bank of the river in the area. The earliest European explorers brought disease with them and the Mandan and other nearby tribes were decimated by disease, losing four out of every five Mandan by 1781. The village across the river from current Bismarck was abandoned before Lewis and Clark came to the area in 1803 as the natives moved farther north to escape disease. In 1872 the army established Fort Abraham Lincoln on the west bank of the river across from the railroad stop that was named Bismarck after German chancellor Otto von Bismarck in an effort to attract German money to fund further expansion by the railroad. The smaller town of Mandan was established on the west bank of the river and today the population of “Bis-Man” (as locals refer to the combined area) totals around 130,000.
Bismarck is a tidy small city built along the top of bluffs on the eastern side of the Missouri River. Prior to the building of dams along the Missouri in the 20th century it was a “wild and wooly” river, prone to raging floods every spring as snowmelt from the Rocky Mountains headed down into the Great Plains before emptying into the Mississippi River in the present day state of Missouri. The skyline of the town is dominated by the North Dakota state capital building. The original building of classic architectural design burned to the ground in 1930 and so Bismarck is the proud site of one of the more modern capital buildings in the United States, a 21 story art-deco tower which is by far the tallest building in the town.
A view from Mandan looking east across the wooded path of the Missouri River shows the capital building on the left and the lower buildings of the city center on the right.
Downtown is a bustling compact area of office buildings and historical residences anchored by the historic Northern Pacific Railroad Depot.
East of the central city is a narrow park along the river, home to two reconstructions from the early history of the Missouri. The first is a replica of a keelboat like those used by Lewis and Clark on their momentous voyage up the river in the early 1800’s. (Bismarck is due west, up and behind the bluff behind the boat.)
From 1872 to 1887 Bismarck was an important stop on a transportation network that included the railroads coming from the east and the steam boats the cruised the Missouri from St. Louis up the river through North Dakota and into Montana as far as Fort Benton on the Missouri and Billings on the Yellowstone. Even though the railroad reached Bismarck in 1872 and construction to the west continued from Mandan, there was no bridge over the Missouri until 1882. As the railroads reached further west the use of the riverboats was discontinued. This replica is now a tourist activity, offering river cruises during the summer months but now, in late October, it’s up on blocks for the winter.
Turning to my left and looking west across the river towards Mandan the view is of the Missouri twisting through the bottomlands of the valley under the interstate bridge to the north and a railroad bridge to the south.
About seven miles southwest of Bismarck is Fort Abraham Lincoln, established in 1872 on the site of an abandoned Mandan village on a bluff above the Missouri to provide protection to the railroad and the coming settlers.
Fort Abraham Lincoln State Park
Fort Abraham Lincoln State Park contains three distinct areas: the Cavalry Post from the early 1870’s where General George Armstrong Custer and his wife Libby lived for three years prior to his departure and death at the Battle of the Little Big Horn in 1876; “On-A-Slant” village, site of a Mandan town from approximately 1575-1781, when a small pox epidemic decimated the tribe and forced abandonment of the village; and on the bluff above Fort Abraham Lincoln, built in 1982 to protect the railroad expansion west and originally named Fort McKeen. The settling of the plains and confinement of Native Americans to reservations quickly ended the need for the military complex and the fort was decommissioned in 1891 and all structures destroyed. The current historical displays are recreations of the way the various areas might have originally appeared as created during the 1930’s by the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), a federal program designed to provide work for men during the Great Depression.
My visit is late in the season and most buildings and programs are closed for the winter. The approach to the state park winds through the Calvary Station, located on flat lands next to the Missouri River just south of the bluff that is the site of Fort Abraham Lincoln. The long, narrow buildings are the cavalry barracks and the house on the left is a reconstruction of the house that General Custer and his wife occupied in 1873.
Past the Cavalry grounds is the visitor center and Mandan village, built by 250 members of the North Dakota CCC who were all World War I veterans during the four years from 1934-1938.
Crossing a narrow footbridge over a wooded gully I walk into the “On-A-Slant” Mandan village. The Mandan were a peaceful tribe who farmed along the Missouri in central North Dakota. They lived in earth packed houses (that are actually quite large) arranged around a central plaza.
The Missouri River flows along the eastern edge of the village and downtown Bismarck can be seen in the far distance (the capital building tower is on the left by the door to the house.)
I climb the bluff above the Mandan village to the site of the fort. The fort was built on a bluff that projects out towards the river with steep sides on the east and south. Three blockhouses guarded the fort, two on the western edge of the triangle and one at the point above the river. Standing on the point I first look west towards the rolling plains and then turn and look past the blockhouse at the point towards Bismarck.
The view to the north looks up the Missouri to the town of Mandan, the view down the river to the south looks out over the Cavalry Station below.
The blockhouse was the key to the defense of the fort. The three corners were connected by a pine palisade that was difficult to maintain. The harsh conditions of the prairie led to rot and fire. The recreation of the blockhouse is pretty accurate and you are able to climb around the inside to get a feel for the experience of being a guard on the frontier.
The road wests continues out of Bismarck on I-94 as the ranch and farmland of central North Dakota unfolds around me in various shades of fall beige.
This is a wide open land with few towns to provide local services, but the area is full of surprises that enrich the drive. Seventy-five miles west of Bismarck is the small town of Richardton.
Richardton, ND
Richardton is a small town of about 500 people founded in 1883 along the railroad as it pushed west. The first clue that something unique might be found is in the twin towers that dominate the view from the overpass at the exit from I-94.
Seems like a grand church for such a small town. Turns on that it is! In the late 1800’s western North Dakota was settled by large numbers of Germans and East European Catholics and the church felt a need to provide a center for the training of priests. The Assumption Abbey was established in Richardton in 1900 to meet that need and over the next 10 years the cathedral complex was completed. The work of the men at the monastery continues to this day. The building is a magnificent jewel in the middle of the prairie.
Beautiful stained glass windows are throughout the cathedral, built in the traditional cross shape.
Remember, this is in a small town of around 500 people!
I jump back on I-94 and head another 15 miles west to my next exit, Gladstone, to travel down the “Enchanted Highway”. This is a classic example of rural America – if you don’t have a tourist attraction, make one up! The Enchanted Highway runs for 32 miles south from Gladstone on I-94 to end at the small village of Regent, frankly in the middle of nowhere. This is stereotypical North Dakota farmland, remote, sparsely settled, cow country. In 1989 a local man, Gary Greff, began the construction of immense scrap metal sculptures along this stretch of road. There is one approximately every five miles. Have to say I was a bit dubious, but turned out to be a fascinating little side trip off the interstate. I tried to get the Lunch Box into most of the pictures to give you an idea of the scale of the sculptures. Another example of the power of one man’s imagination. Enjoy the drive south along the Enchanted Highway…
Just an interesting little jaunt out into America! I complete a “U” and return through the open spaces of southwestern North Dakota to Dickinson, my last stop on “Plains to Pines.”
Dickinson, ND
Dickinson anchors the southern end of the North Dakota oil boom and is a tale of two cities. “Pre-oil” Dickinson was a farming community originally established as a stop along the railroad and sits south of I-94. “Post-oil” Dickinson strings north of I-94 with Walmart, etc., along the highway heading north to the oil fields. This is a pleasant town of about 25,000 people with an economy that ebbs and flows based upon the oil situation. The older part of town contains few historical buildings but there are two points that caught my eye. Dickinson State University sits atop a small hill northwest of the old town center and is the cultural center for the community.
The other place that caught my eye is the Ukrainian Cultural Institute, housed in what looks like an old restaurant next to the train tracks downtown.
Many of the early settlers in the area were from Eastern Europe and this organization strives to preserve their traditions. The first thing that I noticed when I entered was the collection of “Pysanky”, ornately decorated Easter eggs. These are hand-made by local women for sale in the gift shop.
A back room (probably where the Lion’s Club used to meet!) is set up as a chapel and Ukrainian church services are held on a regular basis.
Of course, the real reason for me to stop in Dickinson is to visit my daughter Shannon, son-in-law Curtis and grandchildren Tanner (their son) and Myah (daughter Amber’s daughter who is living with them for the year.) This was Grandpa’s birthday visit as Tanner turned 4 on October 26 and Myah turns 7 on November 5. Lots of fun!
This wraps up my fall journey across the northern United States and again I take a moment to celebrate how blessed I am to be able to have the time to explore our nation off the beaten track. It’s been a fascinating exploration of an area of our country that isn’t part of the “usual” tourist itinerary. As always, thanks for coming along with me and I hope you pick up with my travels next February when I head out of the spring trip. Don’t know where I will be heading, just know it will be someplace that I hope will be warm!
Till next time…
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