The North Dakota Heritage Center & State Museum is back open! Our museum has been rated the top destination in Bismarck for several years, so it makes sense that it attracts photographers from all over the world. As part of the digital media team, I’m lucky enough to see all corners of the museum. Today, I’m going to share with you my favorite spots to snap a perfect post.

1. Cannonball Concretions

The ND Heritage Center & State Museum is located on the beautiful North Dakota Capitol Grounds. With plenty of space for social distancing, try out your daily walk or yoga pose while the morning is quiet.

Sarah Walker, head of reference specialist.

2. French Gratitude Train

What’s your gratitude story? Learn about the French Gratitude Train online or find it on the south grounds.

French Gratitude Train, south grounds of the ND Heritage Center & State Museum.

3. Innovation Gallery: Early Peoples Trade Route Map

This map shows the trade routes from North Dakota and across the Atlantic Ocean. What do you see when you look at a map? How far you’ve come or where you are headed?

Map and routes located in the Innovation Gallery: Early Peoples.

4. James River Café

Treat yourself to a latté in a quiet corner of our café. Bring your special project and unwind for a bit surrounded by the beautiful canopy views.

Cross stitch by Lilly Bowe, visitor services, and comfortable, quiet spaces at the James River Café.

5. Outdoor Spaces

The ND Heritage Center & State Museum has lots of space for outdoor picnics, relaxing with friends, and spending quality time with your dog. Recharge, run, or relax in the shade of the museum.

Enjoy the outdoors. We have free Wi-Fi inside when you’re ready.

6. Adaptation Gallery: Geologic Time Dinosaurs!

It’s always a good day to see dinosaurs. You can take a sloth selfie, too.

When dinosaurs ruled!

7. Museum Store

Here’s a recipe for fun: the museum store! Check out the fun and North Dakota-made gifts.

Clay cookware, available in the museum store.

Or find your new Zoom shirt! (You know you need one.)

This shirt is online meeting ready.

8. Bison Statue

Normally, we’d say keep a safe distance from our North Dakota bison, but this one on the north grounds is perfect to get close to.

Jessica Rockeman, new media specialist.

9. Inspiration Gallery: Yesterday and Today 1950s Soda Shop

Little known fact: Bring a friend to our 1950s soda shop. There is a table and seating inside for two. Hear what would have been on the jukebox. What do you dance to?

Ice cream is great in any era.

10. Natural History in the Inspiration Gallery: Yesterday and Today

Stay well.

Have a BEARY good day!

When I was a kid growing up in North Dakota, I didn’t get to travel much, but I dreamed of going to Europe and seeing its historic sites and cities. So you can imagine my delight when, as a grad student, I got to move to Germany for a few years and visit Paris, London, Florence, and even less-traveled places like Bulgaria and Cyprus. This led me to reflect on historic sites, both in Europe and at home, and how their popularity often has more to do with location than significance. In particular, I came to appreciate the historic places I knew and loved back home. Childhood me could never have guessed that I would get to live in a 16^th-century German half-timbered house, but while there I also yearned to be back at On-a-Slant Village in Mandan. To my own surprise, I found myself trying to remember exactly how the prairie grasses smelled there when their scent was carried on the springtime wind.

St. Olav’s Church, a beautiful building I first learned about on a visit to Tallinn, Estonia, in 2010, may have been the world’s tallest building in the late 1500s to early 1600s. It taught me that often the fame of a historic site has more to do with its location than its actual merits.

Like so much else in this world, people give too much attention to just a few things. Just as there are celebrities among people, there are celebrities among places. It leads to a serious imbalance in global tourism. I’m just one of millions of people who want to—and do—visit Tuscany, the Rhein Valley, and so forth. But these incredible numbers of visitors are doing lasting harm to hotspots like Venice, Florence, Amsterdam, New Orleans, and Yellowstone. Meanwhile, North Dakota remains the least-visited state in the United States.

A healthy number of interested tourists incentivizes locals to preserve their historic places, as well as the music, art, languages, food, architecture, and landscape that go with them. The incentives may be financial. At the Etâr Ethnographic Open Air Museum in Bulgaria, for example (highly recommended, by the way), people are hired to make traditional arts and crafts, many of which are also sold to visitors. The incentives may also simply be inspirational—seeing visitors’ excitement reminds locals of the value of their own heritage. Frankfurt, Germany, for example, which receives moderate visitation, recently reconstructed several streets of their historic old town that had been destroyed in World War II.

The world’s superstar attractions need fewer visitors, while places like North Dakota need more. Last December, the Netherlands announced a rebranding effort aimed in part at attracting fewer but higher-quality tourists. Maybe someday we’ll convince them to sponsor Travel ND ads to lure some visitors away from them and toward us!

Over 15 summers working at various historic sites in North Dakota, I’ve been fortunate to meet thousands of tourists, and I’m happy to report that they’re exactly the kind of visitors the Netherlands dreams of. Because North Dakota is far away from major population centers and transportation routes, those who come here do so with intention. They ask thoughtful questions and want to enjoy everything North Dakota has to offer.

You’d be shocked to learn, however, how many only came here because they want to visit all 50 states, and usually I hear that this is their last one. Sadly, most hadn’t heard what’s unique about North Dakota—things that might attract many more people. Just some examples:

• Traditional dishes like rØmmegrØt, knoephla, wojape, and the taste bud-defying lutefisk.

Comfort food for North Dakotans may be a memorable cultural experience for visitors. This knoepfle soup was made for a special event by the Road Hawg Café in Hazelton.

• Dozens of unique corn varietals with different flavors bred over centuries by North Dakota tribes.
• Earthlodges—an American Indian style of architecture uniquely adapted to the Plains.
• Radio in French or Native American languages that can still be heard in different parts of the state.
• This is the original homeland of the tipi, or that their familiar shapes are actually a masterpiece of thermodynamics.
• The corners of the state, being in the middle of North America, resemble microcosms of the continent, such as yucca and prickly pear in the southwest Badlands to aspen and birch forests in Pembina County.
• The unique Métis nation that arose from the Red River fur trade.
• Many North Dakota towns beginning as settlement colonies of a specific village in Europe, each mirroring the dialect, religion, and family names of its mother village in the old country.
• North Dakota’s unique state-owned grain elevator, selling popular flour, bread mix, and pancake mix you can buy at most grocery stores.
• Games like Dakota and Arikara doubleball or German-Russian horse knucklebones (bunnock), which are as entertaining to watch or play as any modern sport.
• Lakota winter counts that preserve tribal historic records stretching back long before European contact.
• Stunning fields of flax, sunflowers, and canola in bloom.
• Coal mines where you can visit the pit and see the actual wood grain of ancient jungles preserved in lignite.

But when I share these things, they’re almost always fascinated and want to learn more. Many only planned to spend a day in North Dakota and told me they wished they had known to plan more time.

Historic sites both attract these visitors and share this culture. You can’t (and shouldn’t) walk into a modern German-Russian or Mandan home, but you can visit Welk Homestead or Double Ditch Indian Village. We can and do share the music, stories, food, clothing, and games of North Dakota’s unique heritage, being careful, of course, not to misuse culture that is sacred or proprietary. We are delighted to direct visitors to the families, communities, businesses, and tribes who know this culture best. That’s how sustainable tourism works.

This work is urgent. Since I started working at North Dakota historic sites in 2005, it has become harder and harder to find artists, artisans, language speakers, and other cultural experts who can recreate a historical object for us or appear as a guest speaker. Many have passed away before the next generation recognized the value of what they knew. It would be amazing if many more North Dakotans could make a career teaching Lakota, forging German-Russian cemetery crosses, serving potato klubb, making birch baskets, weaving Métis sashes, and more.

North Dakota has all the culture it needs to rival Boston, Santa Fe, or Albuquerque. It’s not so wild a dream. New Mexico at the end of World War II was even more remote than North Dakota, yet they preserved or rebuilt their historic structures, carried on their cultural traditions, and made the rest of the world aware of how many unique things they had to see and do. That’s the vision that I and many other North Dakotans who love historic places see. Let’s work towards balance. Let’s give people a reason to give touristy cities a break and come visit us. We’d be doing everyone a favor.

Stop me if you’ve heard this one: a French marquis, a Dakota sheriff, and a future United States president walk into a bar…sound familiar? It may seem ludicrous, but it happened—at least, it sort of happened—right here in the Badlands of North Dakota!

You already know the story of the Marquis de Morès, a headstrong dreamer with goals of fortune and fame, and his attempt at building a cattle empire in the heart of the Dakota badlands. The railroad reached the Little Missouri River in 1880, and just three years later the Marquis stepped off a train car and into the annals of history. He built an abattoir (meatpacking plant) and a hunting lodge, known as the Chateau de Morès, in addition to spearheading other ventures in fortune.

Convinced that his town, Medora, needed a direct route to the Black Hills for tourists, businessmen, and freight, the Marquis founded the Medora-Deadwood Stage and Forwarding Company in 1884.  It must have been fate, because the sheriff of Deadwood, South Dakota, Seth Bullock, was campaigning for a freight line to connect his city with the railroad in North Dakota.

Down in the Black Hills, Bullock had purchased land, built infrastructure, and tried to convince others that his city of Deadwood, founded in 1876, lacked only a connection to the outside business world. When the Marquis’s company came to town, Bullock shifted gears and began working with the Marquis to convince the Northern Pacific Railroad to help make the line permanent.

Bullock volunteered a parcel of land on his ranch for a stage stop and dubbed it “De Morès.” Within a few months, the little stop had a saloon, a hardware store, and even a small neighborhood. Coaches stopped regularly with passengers and goods that had come in on the railroad. The Marquis and Bullock’s dream seemed to be coming true.

However, over the course of the next year, the company began to lose steam. The railroad funded other plans that left Medora on the sidelines, and Deadwood sought other means of commerce. Just one year after its birth, the stage line failed.

It was around this time that Seth Bullock met a young man from New York with big ideas of experiencing the wilderness. Can you guess who it was? Yes, it was Theodore Roosevelt himself. He had met the Marquis, even dined in his hunting lodge and borrowed books from his library and knew of the Marquis’s dreams of financial success. But the two of them in the same town was like two giant fish in a little pond.

Theodore Roosevelt, a neighbor of the Marquis, friend of Sheriff Bullock, and future president of the United States.

As you know, Roosevelt became president of the United States in 1901, and he famously credited the North Dakota Badlands with giving him the experience he needed to become the leader of the country. Not only did the Badlands shore him up for D.C. challenges, but it also gave him connections. In Deadwood, Bullock and Roosevelt hit it off. As their personal aspirations lead them on separate paths, they worked hard to preserve their friendship. Bullock even erected a monument to represent the esteem the two men held for each other.

Today, Medora and Deadwood have once again begun a partnership. The Deadwood Historic Preservation Commission, based in Sheriff Bullock’s hometown, reached out to the Chateau de Morès, home of the Marquis in Medora. Now, the Chateau de Morès State Historic Site is host to a traveling excellent exhibit that shares the intricacies of Roosevelt’s friendship with Bullock.

Current exhibit at the Chateau de Morès Interpretive Center, featuring the friendship of Roosevelt and Bullock. Free and open to the public through Labor Day, 2020.

The success of this new venture between our two sites depends, in part, on you! Be sure to visit the Chateau de Morès this summer to learn more about three great men—the Marquis, the sheriff, and the president—and then journey down to Deadwood to discover even more! You’ll uncover a history that makes you smile, and, if you’re lucky, you might even hear a joke that makes you laugh. All three gentlemen would approve.

Mention ox cart trails, and many of us visualize deeply rutted paths traveled on by squeaky-wheeled carts. But just as the Pembina Highway in Manitoba and Interstates 29 and 94 in North Dakota and Minnesota are important links in international trade between Winnipeg and the Twin Cities today, the Red River trails of the 1800s were equally important to 19th century trade.

As site supervisor of the Pembina State Museum and Gingras Trading Post State Historic Site, a great deal of the history we present revolves around the Métis, the fur trade, and the Red River carts (the centerpiece of the museum—see photo below). The history of this transportation system created a lot of questions and field trips for me.

Prior to 1800, almost all commerce in the frontier was accomplished by canoe. The Hudson’s Bay Company hauled furs north—including a crossing of Lake Winnipeg—eventually ending up at posts on the shores of Hudson’s Bay where ships waited to transport the furs to Europe. The Northwest Company carried their furs east through the Great Lakes, with a lot of river and lake hopping via portages, until reaching Montreal and the ships bound for the hungry European markets. But travel by canoe was difficult and dangerous.

Credited with using the first carts in the Red River region was Northwest trader Alexander Henry from his post at Pembina. They were relatively small and had solid wheels.

An example of an early Red River cart as would have been used by Alexander Henry

In the early days, the primary route of travel closely hugged the banks of the Red and Minnesota rivers. Due to the nature of the soil in the Red River Valley, these horse-drawn carts could only be used during dry periods, with mud being a major limiting factor. However, cart design and trail location would quickly evolve to meet the challenges of overland travel.

Métis ingenuity created larger carts able to haul up to 1,000 pounds that could be pulled by oxen. Wheel diameter was increased by several feet and were spoked rather than solid. The wheels were dished, or curved inward, to add stability and better handling. By 1830, the more well-known carts were in use and replaced the canoe as the primary means of shipping goods between Winnipeg and St. Paul.

A traditional Red River ox cart. This example, housed in the Pembina State Museum, was built in the 1920s by Louis Allery in the traditional style of the Métis.

While the specifics of the carts themselves are interesting, the selection for trail routes fascinated me. Along with the more versatile carts came new trails. Although the river trails were still used during dry times, the primary trails were moved out of the Red River Valley onto the ancient beach ridges formed by glacial Lake Agassiz. Aptly called the Ridge Trail or West Plains Trail, the soil was much sandier and well-drained, making mud less of a factor. In Minnesota, the trail shifted from following the Minnesota River to a much more direct cross-country route called the East Plains Trail. These remained the principle routes until an unfortunate incident.

Map of the primary trails

In a case of mistaken identity, a group of Métis buffalo hunters attacked a group of young Dakota hunters, with several Dakota being killed. Seeking retribution, the Dakota began patrolling the Plains Trails. In order to avoid a confrontation, the next train of ox carts leaving St. Paul turned north and cut a trail through the forests of Minnesota, which was Ojibway territory, a people friendly to the Métis. Cutting the trail was slow and arduous, but the resulting Woods Trail was used on and off for years depending on the political situation between the Métis and Dakota.

Travel by ox cart was slow, but efficient. Made entirely of wood and leather, there was no need for a blacksmith for on-the-trail repairs. Able to move 15 to 20 miles a day, the course of the trails was carefully selected so that at the end of the day there was always a supply of wood for repairs and cooking fires, and water for the animals. Routes were also chosen based on locations where crossing streams and rivers was easier.

By the 1860s, several thousand carts were making the trip between Winnipeg, Pembina, St. Paul, and the many fledgling settlements along the way. The primary trails saw improvements done by both stagecoach companies and the military, both of which heavily used the trails. Even the Hudson’s Bay Company saw the practicality of overland travel and negotiated trade agreements with the U.S. government to ship their goods via the trails.

Red River ox cart train

The thriving economy created by the Métis in the Red River region, centered around the bison trade and their carts, was short-lived, however. Competition existed with steamboats but was erratic due to the normal fluctuations in Red River water levels. The arrival of the railroad at Breckinridge in 1871 and Moorhead a year later, combined with dramatically declining bison numbers, forced the Métis bison hunters north and west, leaving a few ruts in the landscape as the only tangible reminder of a prosperous era.

Remnants of ox cart ruts along the old Red River trail

Although most of the cart trails are gone, having been cultivated for decades, some remnants still survive. Finding them can be a bit tricky, but with a little hunting they can be discovered. One spot is at Icelandic State Park near Cavalier, although locating the trails there is a challenge and requires staff assistance. Several other trail pieces have been recognized on the National Register of Historic Places. These include various sites in the Ridge Trail Historic District in Pembina and Walsh counties and the Dease-Martineau House, Trading Post and Oxcart Trail Segments near Leroy, North Dakota, although permission is needed to enter. Contact the Pembina County Historic Preservation Commission at 701.265.4561 or pembinaclg@nd.gov for more information. An easily accessible place to view a trail is in Crow Wing State Park near Brainerd, Minnesota. An incredible source for more information is the book The Red River Trails: Ox Cart Routes between St. Paul and the Selkirk Settlement by Rhoda R. Gilman, Carolyn Gilman, and Deborah M. Stultz.

Former Governor Arthur and First Lady Grace Link at their wedding in 1939. SHSND SA 10943-76

Fashion & Function: North Dakota Style, the upcoming exhibition at the North Dakota Heritage Center & State Museum, includes 19 thematic sections ranging from decorative and symbolic feather usage to graduation gowns. One section—dubbed “The Wedding March”—focuses on bridal traditions utilizing a selection of garments, photographs, and accessories. And while bridal white features prominently in the layout, it isn’t the exclusive color.

Drawn from the State Historical Society’s objects and photographic collections, the display captures a wide range of garments worn by North Dakota brides, including an afternoon suit, an evening dress, and an ensemble hand-crocheted by the bride’s grandmother over a three-month period.

Also included are two folk ensembles worn by Norwegian and Icelandic brides in the mid-19th century. The colorful Norwegian bunad includes elaborate embroidery worked with glass beads, while the Icelandic Skautbúningur features a national folk style introduced just prior to its wearing in 1861.

Wedding portrait of Mr. and Mrs. Dick Ramsey, Fort Yates, circa 1908. The bride wears a fashionable, flounced, white cotton batiste lingerie dress with a dotted Swiss motif, a floral headdress, and silk tulle veil. SHSND SA 1952-2037

The most formal gown in the grouping is also the “history mystery” within the exhibition, as it appears incomplete. The ivory wool flannel and silk brocade gown (SHSND 13405) was worn by Jennie Martha Kelley at her marriage to Oscar St. Clair Chenery, in Jamestown, during the late territorial period. The gown stylistically falls within the second bustle period of the 19th century.

Bodice and detail of the Kelley wedding gown, 1886. SHSND 13405

Beginning in the late 1860s the fullness of the period’s bell-shaped skirts began to shift—with the mass moving to the back—often accented with swaged overskirts and flared peplums. This silhouette collapsed in the late 1870s with the introduction of fitted princess-line gowns featuring long trailing fishtail trains. Then, in the 1880s, the bustle reappeared as a very prominent feature extending much like a wide shelf from the base of the wearer’s back.

The period was distinctive for the profuse use of upholstery trims, embroidery, draped swags, and knife-pleated ruffles, all accenting the mass of the bustle. It was the age of conspicuous consumption. Bustles (politely termed tournures) were supported by spring wire, horsehair, and hinged steel hoop understructures of a scale that made it impossible to sit back in a chair, forcing fashionable women to perch sideways when they sat. Ladies chairs were designed without arms to accommodate their full skirts.

The Kelley wedding gown dates to 1886. Its “history mystery” is that the distinctive bustled train is missing. The skirt has been modified yet retains a removable half-moon-shaped dust ruffle indicating the fullness of the original bustle and chapel-length train. The dust ruffle would have protected the underside of the train as it dragged across floors and the ground.

Two lace-edged silk brocade swags positioned over the skirt’s hips—known as a polonaise (in the Polish style)—indicate they led to an incomplete back arrangement that no doubt incorporated both a third swag (completing the polonaise), and a cascade of both silk brocade and lace forming the train. The bustle must have been made as a separate component attached to the back waistline of the skirt.

Another feature of the wedding gown is its rather deep neckline. As it appears, the bride would have had reason to blush as she would have gone down the aisle virtually bare breasted! The neckline’s deep cut and the presence of narrow lapels and lace ruffles indicate it was filled with a chemisette—much like a dickey—providing a more modest secondary inner neckline, probably fashioned of gathered silk tulle matching the dress trim.

Do you know the difference between a bodice and a blouse? A blouse—while it can be tailored—is unstructured. A bodice has a fitted inner lining often including boning and occasionally padding. The steel boning in the Kelley wedding bodice was intended to maintain a smooth silhouette. A separate corset would have been worn as part of the underwear to support the bride’s figure.

Fashion & Function: North Dakota Style will appear in the Governors Gallery at the North Dakota Heritage Center & State Museum in 2021.

While working from home the past two months, collection staff in the Audience Engagement and Museum Division started a long-needed data cleanup project. While often tedious, one part of this project I am truly enjoying is researching the first names of women who we only have recorded as “Mrs. Last Name,” or “Mrs. Husband’s Name.”

The New York Times recently published a series called “The Mrs. Files” discussing the same type of project. This article articulates the tradition of using a husband’s name to refer to a married woman.

Women using “Mrs. Husband’s Name” in a social and official capacity was very common, although it seems odd looking at it from a contemporary point of view. Many of the artifact donation forms from the early days of the State Historical Society are signed this way, and this continued well into the 1980s.

I believe it is important that these women are remembered as themselves, not only by the names of their loved ones. Researching and recording these first names ensures their work and contributions to the state’s history are remembered.

Mrs. Adams

In 1936, the North Dakota Federation of Women’s Clubs donated a sampler created by a Mrs. Adams from LaMoure. In this case, the artifact itself helped identify the artist, as Mrs. Adams embroidered her initials, “O.M.A.” I didn’t think many Adamses would be living in LaMoure during that period, so I looked through census records. In the 1940 census, three women with the last name Adams appeared in LaMoure County; one was Olive. To confirm this suspicion, I looked at the 1930 census, and listed below her husband Paul was “Olive M. Adams.” Digging a little further I learned Olive Marshall, born in 1879, married Paul Adams, a prominent LaMoure banker, in 1904. Looking into newspapers from the area would probably reveal even more about Olive M. Adams, but for now, her full name fills gaps in the sampler’s history.

Sampler by Olive Marshall Adams (the artist formerly known as Mrs. Adams). SHSND 1977.27

Mrs. William P. Zahn

There are beautiful pieces of beadwork in the State Historical Society’s collection attributed to Mrs. William P. Zahn. Researching Mrs. Zahn was not difficult because her son, Frank B. Zahn, donated the items. Frank, a prominent North Dakota judge and historian, was easy to find. According to his obituary, Frank was the son of William P. and Kezewin Zahn.¹ Kezewin was the daughter of Yanktonai chief Flying Cloud and appears in some Federal and Indian census records under the English-Christian name Mary Josephine Zahn (an assimilationist re-naming practice deserving of its own full article). I knew the State Archives had records from Frank Zahn, so I did a quick search and they have multiple photos of Kezewin and her family!

How striking is it to put not only a full name, but also a face to the woman who made this piece!

Soft cradle hood made by Kezewin Zahn. SHSND 2557

Mrs. John Kruger

In 1956, Mrs. Otto A. Matzek donated the wedding dress of her mother, Mrs. John Kruger. This one was harder. I had two people to find. Once I found that Mrs. Matzek was Edith Kruger Matzek, finding her mother became easier. Researching Gerahdina “Dena” Detmer Kruger revealed two things. First, we had the wrong date recorded for the dress. The donor misremembered her mother’s wedding date as January 1912. The Weekly-Time Record out of Valley City announced the upcoming wedding of Miss Dena Detmer and John W. Kruger on January 15, 1913.²

Dena Detmer Kruger’s time-traveling wedding dress. SHSND 13355

Second, it turns out that Dena Detmer was a postmaster for Lucca in Barnes County in the 1930s! How cool is that?!

Dena, the mail woman (Ancestry.com. U.S., Appointments of U. S. Postmasters, 1832-1971 [database on-line].)

The State Historical Society has artifacts and records attributed to women around the state using their husband’s names. We don’t know if they did this simply because it was the social norm, or if that was their preferred title. Perhaps early record keepers made the decision for them. Whatever the reason, documenting the women’s full names builds a richer and more complete picture of North Dakota’s history.

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¹ “Frank B. Zahn, Historian, Judge, Dies Here Sunday,” The Bismarck Tribune, July 5, 1966, 10.
² The Weekly Times-Record (Valley City, ND), January 9, 1913, 5.