They say people who ignore history are doomed to repeat it, so pay attention to this blog post! Visit ndstudies.gov or the collections of the ND Heritage Center & State Museum and you may never sleep again.

1. Cough Syrups and Suppressants

People in the 19th century took their coughs pretty seriously. Decades before antibiotics, huge fortunes were made selling “all natural, safe and soothing” cures. Which isn’t to say that these serums weren’t effective at mellowing you out — it’s just that slapping “natural, safe, and soothing” on the label doesn’t mean they weren’t packed with as much booze and narcotics as they could handle. Which they were.

Is there anything it can’t cure? Not according to the label. (SHSND 18061)

This type of massively misleading marketing drove support for a clean food and drug policy in the United States. One of the unsung heroes of the movement, who had crazy ideas like removing morphine and chloroform from baby cough syrup, was Edwin Ladd. A chemistry professor at North Dakota Agricultural College in Fargo, Ladd later brought his expertise to bear as a U.S. senator. Ladd’s passion for ensuring food quality is the reason the box of ground pepper you bought at the grocery store is actually ground pepper and not something like ground coconut shells. I am totally not making that up.

2. Rocks from Space

Most are familiar with a popular theory about the end of the dinosaurs; everything was going fine until a giant rock fell out of space, and then something awful happened to the temperature. But that was so 65 million years ago. Could such a thing happen to humans? It already did. In Siberia. And not to be outdone, North Dakota has its own impressive collection of meteorites.

The best documented case would be the Richardton meteorite. On an otherwise normal day, June 30, 1918, at 9:48 a.m., a meteorite exploded above Richardton and Mott. In total, nearly 220 pounds of rock were collected, and amazingly, nobody was hurt.

This thing traveled a long way to get the North Dakota Heritage Center & State Museum. (On loan from University of Minnesota)

To see how unlucky North Dakota can be in the Milky Way, including our impact craters, check out North Dakota Night Sky. And see a piece of the Richardton meteorite on exhibit at the ND Heritage Center & State Museum.

3. Anatomy Furniture

Museums sometimes hold a great deal of furniture for a variety of reasons. And sometimes that reason seems to be documenting all the different ways Lovecraftian horrors can be imposed in a room.

This footstool is made of your Roomba’s nightmares. (SHSND 12774)

Back in the day, furniture that was likely to be conversational as well as stabby was a common theme. This is a huge and surprisingly heavy hat rack that could also impale your pets.

Did not predict the sharp decline of giant hats. Did predict the comeback of the scrunchie. (SHSND 6085)

Make a plan to visit the State Museum on Halloween. You never know what spooky thing you’ll discover.

This stool may cause reproductive harm. Thankfully it is encased on exhibit in the State Museum’s Inspiration Gallery. (SHSND 2010.68.1)

Stay weird out there.

Call me Madame. Actually, you can call me Anna; we reserve the title “Madame” for Medora von Hoffman, the first lady of the Chateau de Morès. She and her husband the Marquis de Morès, Antoine de Vallambrosa, lived here 136 years ago. A lot has changed over the decades, but the Chateau itself has remained steady, guarding its secrets well.

What secrets? I am so glad you asked! At first glance, the Chateau seems like a lovely home tucked on a butte beside the Little Missouri River. The Marquis and Madame strove to be on the cusp of national innovation, and their opulent style is clear. However, throughout the house are hidden messages about their lives that only eagle-eyed guests can find.

Keeping with Madame’s spirit of hospitality, I invite you to come along for a sneak peek at my top five hidden surprises at the Chateau!

1. Fresh Air
On hot summer days, Madame could be found in her office planning anything from menus to hunting trips. But when the heat rose, she needed fresh air. Because of social boundaries, a lady could not simply open her door to allow the breeze to flow. Instead, she had to protect her modesty. Coming to the rescue, the Marquis had small windows built at the top of Madame’s office and bedroom walls that allowed fresh air into her rooms without compromising her privacy.

The small windows at the top of the frame, shown here from the Chateau porch, lead to Madame’s bedroom and office.

2. Talking in Code
Madame and the Marquis tried to embrace the western frontier while keeping pace with eastern society. To that end, the main level of the house has several distinct areas: the dining and living rooms, the homeowners’ private quarters, and servants’ areas. Each room is connected by a hallway that circles the entire first floor. Each door in the hall is equipped with faux-stained glass that allows light to shine through while maintaining privacy. And, these doors talked in code. If the doors were open, servants knew they were welcome to pass through. If closed, they should refrain from entering.

View of the servants’ corridor in the dining room. This door is shut, so you know what that means . . . no servants can pass through!

3. Baby, It’s Cold Outside
This fireplace is impressive. Measuring five feet deep, it could put out some heat on a cold night. Did you know this is the only fireplace in the entire Chateau? Based on an unfortunate claim, the Marquis believed the climate in the Badlands was mild and one fireplace would keep the cold at bay. This was wrong, but some years the family still managed to stay as late as December before leaving to enjoy a milder European winter.

This fireplace was the centerpiece for guests in the Chateau who gathered in the living room for entertainment. Can’t you imagine settling on the settee and reading a good book?

4. Richie Rich
My favorite clue, stashed among the wares of the hunting room, is one bag of tobacco. This seemingly ordinary purchase is a huge hint about the Marquis! In the 19th century, tobacco was just beginning to gain in mass popularity, and southern states like North Carolina had already proven to produce some of the highest quality plug tobacco in the nation. The Marquis used his wealth to ship it across the continent to North Dakota, showing just how much he was willing to spend on luxuries.

Originally from Germany, the Marburg brothers moved to North Carolina and went into business with J.B. Duke and the American Tobacco Company. If the name “Duke” sounds familiar, Duke University was named after J.B.’s father.

5. Lost in Time
Several decades ago, a collection of beautiful watercolor paintings were gifted to the State Historical Society. The artist was none other than Madame herself. Among her impressions of the Badlands and international landscapes was one small painting of the Chateau. This is the most valuable to us, because it is the only known image of the Chateau completed in color. Thanks to Madame we now know the authentic colors to paint the house.

Today, the Chateau is painted to look like Madame’s watercolor version.

The next time you visit the Chateau, be sure to keep an eye out for more clues! You never know what history lies hidden in plain sight.

For years I’ve talked and written about the importance of saving moving images. Whether moving images are television news stories, athletic events, a family event, a picnic, parade, or simply people in their daily lives, they should be preserved for present and future generations. Moving image brings an event to life. Seeing an event is so much more powerful than just hearing or reading about it.

The State Archives has a large collection of moving images that originate from a number of sources including local newscasts, sportscasts, government agencies, filmmakers, and home movie enthusiasts. These collections show real people and provide a viewing window into people and events of the past.

Preserving moving image is a challenge as the equipment to play the media becomes more difficult to find and maintain. Through the years, transferring an older format to another, more usable format has been the standard practice. Thirty years ago, 16mm film would be transferred to a VHS or U-matic ¾” tape. As that practice became dated, a transfer to a DVD was more convenient to users and preservation. Today, using the original format if possible, we convert moving image to a digital format that can be saved on a server. A digital file is convenient because we can easily edit it and share it with patrons in a timely manner.

As a frequent user and preservationist of the State Historical Society’s moving image collection, I also promote the importance and methods of saving these keepsakes. That is why we have partnered with the Al Larvick Conservation Fund to host Home Movie Day.

Home Movie Day is a worldwide opportunity for organizers to help the local community access their old films and videotapes while sharing their memories and family lore handed down through generations. Beginning Oct. 19, 2019, the first official Home Movie Day will take place in North Dakota at the ND Heritage Center & State Museum. Additional programs will follow Oct. 20 in Valley City and Oct. 22 in Grand Forks.

The idea of bringing your analog mementos into the modern digital age can be daunting for a number of reasons. Digitization can be expensive and can also be a confusing process. Visitors who bring their family movies to a Home Movie Day are able to observe as their film reel or videotape is shown and saved for future generations. These one-afternoon digitizing events can jump-start a genealogy project and give a glimpse into the treasures that may have been hiding at the bottom of a closet for years, if not decades.

Click here for more information and to sign up for an event.

For those who would like to get some of their analog media digitized in Bismarck or Valley City, we recommend reserving a digitization spot in advance by contacting Shane Molander at 701.328.3570 or smolander@nd.gov.

When I taught school, it was part of my first-day routine to ask my students if any of them liked history. The complete lack of raised hands taught me that there was no point in asking. I was working at a private boarding school with students from all over the country, and not even one of them liked history or was at least willing to admit it.

If you had asked me in high school, I would not have raised my hand either. I was in college when I discovered my love of history. What changed? The presentation.

When it comes to middle and high school history, there is an emphasis on rote memorization and the regurgitation of facts. I understand why. Teachers have a set of standards they are supposed to achieve and not a lot of time to reach them. To accomplish these goals, teachers must omit chunks of history like the entire Gilded Age. (According to state standards, nobody needs to know about the Gilded Age — unless you end up managing the Chateau de Mores.) The syllabus for my world history class included the impressive statement that we would cover 40,000 years of history in 36 weeks. This was like taking a 700-page book and adapting it to a 90-minute film. At best, you are only scratching the surface of the story.

History is a social science, or as I would tell my students, it is a skill set. It is about looking at sources and developing your interpretation about what happened. When you focus on the skills and the analysis rather than striving to check items off a list, then you can dive into the parts of history that are fascinating, mind-blowing, or odd. The elements of history that make the topic fun. If you have ever seen a student’s reaction to learning that England and Spain went to war over an ear, then you know what I mean.

State historic sites can have the same presentation problem. There is not enough time to cram in all the fascinating information that staff have spent countless hours researching into a short visit. Staff can suffer from a mindset that we have to tell you everything, or we are not doing our jobs. While lots of accurate information, facts, and stories will fascinate some visitors, for others, too much information is not a compelling experience.

Who do you think is more likely to go to a museum, young adults or senior citizens? The answer seems obvious, and most would assume that museums are for the older generation and don’t fit the lifestyle of the tech-savvy younger generations. But according to a 2018 study conducted by Wilkening Consulting, young adults are 50 percent more likely to visit a museum than older adults.¹ There are several reasons for this, but a leading reason is that they visited a museum or site as a kid and had a memorable experience.

Part of my job as state historic sites manager is trying to figure out what makes a memorable experience. It is a difficult task as there is no magic formula. There are a multitude of ways that people experience a site. From the moment a visitor pulls into a site, they are already experiencing it. Some issues are easy to address, such as making sure that the site is well maintained and that the staff is friendly and knowledgeable. The tricky part is when you try to take it to the next level. Our Hands-on History program is adding opportunities for visitors to touch, try, experiment, and play with historical items, clothes, and games. We are also looking at new technology such as augmented reality and smart speakers and how we can leverage that technology to create new and exciting ways to interact with our sites and exhibits.

And sometimes it is just about finding what makes a site cool. My nephew got to visit the Ronald Reagan Minuteman Missile State Historic Site with me as part of the 10th anniversary as a state historic site this summer. After getting to go 50 feet underground and seeing the art on the walls, he insisted on buying a t-shirt, and wore it almost every day he was at the family lake cabin and on the first day of school. Why? So that people would ask him about it, and he could share the story of his memorable experience.

Archaeologists have been seeking higher vantage points to photograph and map archaeological sites for decades. Cameras mounted under balloons or kites, cameras in aircraft or powered parachutes, or photos taken from ladders, mechanical lifts, or even a slight hill — archaeologists have used them all at one time or another to gain an aerial perspective and document site excavations.

Some early methods of photography used by archaeologists were not for the faint of heart. A fully extended ladder stabilized by wires was used to photograph excavations at the Oldham site located in Charles Mix County, South Dakota. (River Basin Survey photograph 39CH7-405).

Stanley Ahler of the PaleoCultural Research Group and Lloyd Jensen of the State Historical Society of North Dakota use an articulating boom lift to photograph excavations at Menoken Indian Village State Historic Site in August 2005. (Note: Both men were wearing a protective safety harness.)

A relatively new method of mapping features at archaeological sites is drone mapping. Since 2017, I’ve written about flying the State Historical Society’s quadcopter (or “drone”) to photograph state historic sites multiple times. Most recently, I’ve written about using our drone to photograph Cannonball Stage Stop and Fort Mandan Overlook State Historic Sites.

Fort Mandan Overlook offers a great example of using a drone to generate a highly detailed surface map of features (such as house depressions, fortifications ditches, or topography) present on an archaeological site. The aerial images are processed using specialized software. State Historical Society archaeologists drone mapped the Fort Mandan Overlook site on July 25, 2019.

Aerial image of Fort Mandan Overlook State Historic Site in McLean County, North Dakota, taken by quadcopter on July 25, 2019. The fortification ditch visible in this image was a defensive structure constructed sometime in the late-18th to mid-19th century. The site was initially occupied as early as the 1300s. The site overlooks the former location of Lewis and Clark’s Fort Mandan, which was washed away by the Missouri River soon after the expedition passed through the area.

To prepare for a drone mapping mission, State Historical Society archaeologists established a series of “ground control points” at the site using a centimeter-level accuracy Global Positioning System (GPS) unit and ground targets. The targets help to accurately align the images captured by the drone and supplement the GPS coordinates tagged to each of the images.

Six of these targets were placed on the ground surface at the site, and centimeter-precise GPS coordinates were collected prior to mapping.

Prior to flying the drone at the site, a detailed “mission plan” was created using Pix4D capture, a software specifically designed for drone mapping. The mission plan directed the drone to fly in a grid pattern over the site area at a specific altitude and collect images of the ground surface that would be mosaicked or “stitched” together later. The resulting 356 images are at a very high resolution, and each image has extremely detailed locational information associated with it.

An image of the Pix4D Capture software during our “mission” at Fort Mandan Overlook. An aerial image of the area serves as a basemap. The mission grid is visible, and the green dots indicate the position of collected images.

One of the 356 images collected by the drone at Fort Mandan Overlook. This image is in the southeast corner of the site. The original image was also tagged with GPS coordinates.

After the grid mission was flown, the images collected were processed using photogrammetry software called Agisoft Metashape. Photogrammetry is the process of obtaining information about objects or the environment by analyzing and interpreting photographic images. The software corrects the inherent distortion introduced when we photograph three-dimensional objects (like artifacts or the ground surface), and then displays the images on a flat surface (like a computer monitor or a printed page).

In this case, the images used in an analysis of the surface of the Fort Mandan Overlook site were those collected by our drone. Photogrammetric image analysis is an area of research the State Historical Society’s Chief Archaeologist Andy Clark is quite familiar with, and he processed the 356 overlapping images collected using this specialized software to produce measurably accurate three-dimensional models and photographs. I’ve included a couple brief descriptions below.

An image from the photogrammetric software used to process images collected at Fort Mandan Overlook. The blue rectangles at top indicate the relative positions of the images collected by the drone. The three-dimensional image below is the result of “stitching” the images into a mosaic using a pixel-matching algorithm. The individual images collected by the drone are seen at the bottom of this screenshot.

A digital surface model (DSM) of Fort Mandan Overlook. DSMs contain elevation data of the terrain and other features present on the surface (like trees and structures). In this image, the red, orange, and yellow colors represent lower elevations at the site, so the bluff edge at the site can clearly be identified.

Image showing a relief map of Fort Mandan Overlook. A relief map is a 3-D representation of a surface, with the Sun’s position indicated. Relief maps tend to look realistic and can be useful in interpreting a three-dimensional surface. The fortification ditch and drainages present at the site are clearly visible in this image.

An orthophotograph showing Fort Mandan Overlook. Orthophotographs are aerial images that have been geometrically corrected to minimize distortion so that scale is uniform and features are measurable. Distances and area can be accurately measured using orthophotographs.

State Historical Society archaeologists have “drone mapped” five archaeological sites in this manner so far. While my focus has been primarily on using the drone to document and map archaeological sites, some of my coworkers have begun using similar techniques to model artifacts like stone tools, pottery, and even historic clothing. Keep an eye out for new 3-D projects described in future blog entries!

While most of my internship at the State Historical Society was spent working with collections in the deep recesses of the museum, one of my projects was to create an exhibit commemorating the upcoming 100th anniversary of woman suffrage (right to vote). This meant my work was actually going to be seen by the public, as I was writing, designing, and compiling objects specifically for public viewing. It was an exciting change! While planning for this exhibit, I decided to expand upon the topic and include not only objects related to the early suffrage movement, but also highlight North Dakota women’s leadership and activism through the 20th century, showing how the ripples from the woman suffrage movement continue today.

To help illustrate the scope of these women’s work, I chose objects from international and national women’s rights events and the push for the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) in the 1970s and ’80s.

The museum collection holds many artifacts related to women’s rights activism, most of them being buttons, ribbons, and clothing. But there was one unusual item: this bracelet from the 1970s. It has a cutout reading ERA, referring to the Equal Rights Amendment, a proposed amendment to the US Constitution guaranteeing equal rights regardless of sex. This bracelet is the only piece of women’s activism jewelry in the collection, directly drawing attention to the ERA and the ongoing fight to ratify it.

This smock is from International Women’s Year (1975). The garment is from the donor’s days as an activist working to gain ratification of the ERA. In choosing it for the exhibit, I hoped to put women’s activism in a global context, as International Women's Year was celebrated by the United Nations. So not only is the smock fashionable, it’s making a political statement and is a marker for a year in which women’s rights were recognized on a global scale.

Finally, one of my favorite artifacts in the exhibit is this tote bag reading “A woman’s place is in the House . . . and in the Senate.” This object’s existence is a direct result of women becoming engaged in politics. It was purchased by the donor in 1981 during the 53rd Girls Nation held at Georgetown University in Washington, DC. I loved researching Girls Nation, an ongoing program introducing girls to the workings of government. This tote helps show the scope of organizations encouraging women to become leaders in their communities, while also proudly bearing a slogan I’d like to cross-stitch onto a pillow.

By expanding the scope of the exhibit using these objects, I hoped to draw a direct line from women gaining suffrage to activism continuing through the 20th century and today. Women’s direct participation in politics and activism helped pass the 1917 North Dakota Suffrage Bill, and continued activism by women in the decades following have strengthened support for advances in equality like the ERA. I love how the exhibit turned out, and it made me hopeful that the State Historical Society museum collection will continue to add artifacts symbolizing North Dakota’s history of women’s activism.