If you had visited the Heritage Center museum prior to October 2012 you might remember a mastodon skeleton – 12’ high at the shoulder, 16’ from tusk to tail, and 13,000 years old. Fast-forward 18 months and the same mastodon now has a place of honor in the expanded ND Heritage Center & State Museum. Unlike in the movies, he didn’t come alive at night and take a walk, so how did he get there? Well, let’s start on how he came to be here.

On a spring day in 1890, while digging a ditch on his uncle’s farm near Highgate, Ontario, William Reycraft unearths the massive bones of a mastodon. The Regcrafts sell the bones and rights to excavate to partners William Hillhouse and John Jelly. The amazing moment is captured by a local photographer. 

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Hillhouse and Jelly display the bones around Ontario, charging a nickel or dime for a viewing. Hoping to further cash in on the public’s interest, they contract with R.A. Essury to travel the bones across the West. Unfortunately, Essury dies while on tour and Hillhouse and Jelly lose track of the bones!

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Three years later the bones surface in Minneapolis, Minn., when they are sold to re-coup unpaid storage bills. For the next few years the new owners again tour the bones, this time around Minnesota, South Dakota, and North Dakota. In 1902 the bones are sold to the University of North Dakota, who in turn give the bones to the State Historical Society of North Dakota in 1947.

In 1991-1992 the bones are assessed by museum curators and the state paleontologist.

The skeleton is found to be 95 percent complete and remarkably well-preserved. A modern reconstruction is undertaken with the goals of minimum damage to the bones and scientifically accurate posture. The majority of the skeleton is supported by a flexible rod suspended from the ceiling that runs the length of the spinal column. The feet and legs are mounted individually and don’t support any of the body’s weight.

Now it’s 20 years later and the ND Heritage Center is in the midst of a major expansion. The mastodon occupies a new central space in the new building. There was a very small window in which to move the enormous and delicate skeleton. There was not time to take it apart bone by bone. Exhibits staff and paleontologists had to figure out a way to efficiently but safely move the mastodon. The eventual solution was to suspend the majority of the skeleton from a moveable gantry that could be wheeled into place. This left only the legs, tail, shoulder blades, and lower jaw to be moved individually. Instead of weeks, it only took days to move.

We hope you’ll come and visit the mastodon in its new home!

Supervising a state historic site takes an understanding of many different disciplines—an extensive knowledge of history and the history of the site are just the most important. Historic site supervision means I must be ready for anything. When I started as supervisor of the Ft. Totten State Historic Site, I never thought I would soon be fluent in running a Bobcat or using my limited experience (3 weeks) as a temporary assistant for a boiler repairman to fix plumbing in the visitor’s center. Caring for a historic site requires constant vigilance and a willingness to get your hands dirty.

Repairing bathroom plumbing at Ft. Totten

Currently, I am supervising the restoration and rehabilitation of the hospital, one of 16 historic buildings at Ft. Totten. This summer, we hope to complete the tuck pointing of the masonry as well as repairing and replacing several windows.

In addition to the maintenance of an ever changing historic site, I also spend time planning events and educational programming for the site. We are always challenging ourselves to come up with new ideas to interpret the site, and to hopefully better tell the story of Ft. Totten. We are presently planning the annual Living History Field Day for September. Each year, area students come to the site to learn about frontier military activities, boarding school trades and American Indian culture.

On any given day, I can be found opening the gift shop, removing gophers from the parade ground, or answering a phone call about a relative who may have gone to school here in the 1920s. It certainly sounds hectic, but I wouldn’t change it for anything. The excitement and unpredictability I find out here at Ft. Totten, on the shores of Devils Lake, makes it one of the most exciting and worthwhile jobs to have.

Taking phone calls at Ft. Totten

One of the best parts of being a site supervisor is doing research. In my next blog entry, I plan to provide an in-depth look at what research goes into answering some of the fascinating questions on the history of the site. Until then, explore your surroundings.

Researching the site history of Ft. Totten

It was 1915, and the population of North Dakota was approximately 600,000 people and growing. To attract more immigrants to the state, the State Immigration Department hired Frithjof Holmboe, a Norwegian immigrant, to travel around North Dakota to produce promotional films showcasing the positive characteristics of several counties.  (We have not found any North Dakota winter footage from Holmboe.)  As the state began to fall into an economic depression in 1921, Holmboe closed up the Publicity Film Company studio in Bismarck and moved to California.

It was not until the 1970s that the State Historical Society of North Dakota (SHSND) found the films.  Tucked tightly away in a storage building at Fort Abraham Lincoln, the original 35mm nitrate films had visible signs of deterioration; many were oozing liquid and covered with dust. After the discovery, the SHSND, with the help of the American Revolution Bicentennial Commission, shipped the original 35mm films to a lab in New Jersey to convert the originals into 16mm safety film.  The lab was not able to save all of the film; some of it had almost completely deteriorated. The new 16mm safety film of Frithjof Holmboe’s work arrived back at the State Archives for preservation and was eventually placed in a freezer to halt deterioration.

Left - Frithjof Holmboe’s original 35mm nitrate film after its discovery in a storage building at Fort Abraham Lincoln.
Right - Signs of deterioration on Holmboe’s original 35mm nitrate film before it was sent to New Jersey for transfer to 16mm safety film.
* Photos from 10782 Snyder Films Collection – Flickertail Flashbacks

Recently, we braved the -5°F temperature of the freezer and took the safety film out to re-digitize it in a less compressed format. Before re-digitizing the film, we cleaned it to remove any dust and debris that may compromise the picture quality. Cleaning also helps to preserve it, along with the low temperature and low humidity that is in the freezer.

To clean the film, we use a 91% rubbing alcohol and a lint free cloth. The higher the alcohol content the quicker the liquid dries, allowing us to digitize the film almost immediately after cleaning.

Left - Braving the freezer to retrieve the film from the Frithjof Holmboe Collection
Right - Cleaning the safety film with 91% rubbing alcohol and lint free cloth.

We placed the 16mm Holmboe film onto our Tobin Video Transfer machine. This machine has a built-in video camera that can record sound and video at the same time. Our BlackMagic DeckLink then captures the film. The DeckLink records the footage in an Apple ProRes format. Originally, we digitized the film into mp4 format because it takes up less space and is a popular format; however, in order to use our historic film in the new expansion exhibits, we needed a less compressed format. After we digitized the film, we placed it back into the freezer. Since technology is always changing, there is no doubt we will be revisiting the Holmboe film again to re-digitize it into the next best format.

Although Frithjof Holmboe’s film is our oldest collection, it is only one of many film and video collections preserved at the State Archives. Our film and video collections include family films, commercial films, state agency films, and news films. If you have any questions about our collections or contributing to the collection, please contact Lindsay at lschott@nd.gov.

Enjoy a clip of Frithjof Holmboe’s films! We also show some Holmboe films as part of our free daily public movies showing in the Great Plains Theater at the ND Heritage Center & State Museum.

Hosting a “Recognition and Thank You Event” is a lot of work – at best a marathon of activity and outreach efforts. But all that fades into the twilight when you walk into a ballroom filled with more than 550 people who have come to help celebrate success. It is an extraordinary sense of accomplishment and a source of immense thankfulness and humility. Donors and supporters from all over the state converged at the Ramkota Hotel on April 24, 2014 for a very special evening honoring our donors and supporters - Touchstone Energy Cooperatives of North Dakota, A Kirk and Janet Lanterman, Governor William and Jean Guy, USDA US Forest Service Dakota Prairie Grasslands and Tesoro for the passport project, and the North Dakota Legislature. Together we all celebrated the expansion of the North Dakota Heritage Center and State Museum – the “Smithsonian on the Plains” – a regional, international destination – an architectural wonder.

Planning for this event began four years ago when we selected which organizations and individuals we would honor in 2012 and then in 2014. We had to visit with corporate executives and families to see if the dates worked – and in a number of cases they did not causing us to move honorees from 2012 into 2014 and even on into 2016. Nothing is simple.

Personal visits with all donors two years before the event set in place times for individual interviews and photo and video sessions. A four day photography tour across the Touchstone Energy territory was planned more than a year ago, with 4-6 stops each day at plants, offices and customer farms and community buildings. Interviews were coordinated and filmed at Basin Electric in Bismarck and Minnkota Power in Grand Forks – and even a couple of trips out of state were necessary to do executive interviews. All of these interviews and photos were incorporated into a photo tribute gift book, recognition publications, and an 18-minute video on Touchstone’s history – all part of the recognition event happenings.

The wonderful part of this process is the opportunity to get to know your donors and supporters more intimately – seeing their worlds and coming to understand their career and giving motivations. It is all worth the effort. The 2014 event was a success because we have taken the time to know our donors and appreciate their desire to make a difference with their gifts. It becomes very obvious that thousands of people have invested in the expansion and we are grateful for each and every one of those generous individuals and organizations! Thank You!

Jon McMillan, Foundation Board President, addresses hundreds of supporters who gathered to celebrate the Heritage Center Expansion.

What does an archaeological collections assistant do? And (even more importantly) why? Here is a whirl-wind review of some of the things I am involved in and why!

I do a lot of cataloging, photographing, and labeling of archaeological artifacts. North Dakota has an estimated 12 million objects in its state archaeology collection! Unless we record these objects, have a way to identify them, and can find where they are stored, it is very difficult for anyone to study, learn from, look at, or enjoy our collections. This is my favorite part of my job. You never know what you might find next.

I also catalog paperwork relating the collections to the archaeological surveys and excavations from which they were recovered. This is important because the paperwork connects the artifacts to their provenience (where the objects were found). Knowing exactly where objects were found means we can learn things about people living in certain areas of North Dakota at particular times. And knowing exactly where objects were found in relation to other artifacts and features within a site means we can form a clearer picture of how people lived and interacted with the world around them. It makes the stories that the artifacts can tell us much more detailed.

Older collections are sometimes stored in less-than-ideal boxes and materials. In the past, objects were often stored in whatever was available at the time (including window flower boxes, cigar boxes, and old newspapers). We have learned over time that older acidic materials like these (even if they look nice) affect the objects stored in them--the writing on the boxes and bags fade away and the objects stored inside these materials start to crumble or fall apart. We don’t want to lose the collection information on the boxes and bags, and we don’t want to lose the objects themselves! So re-bagging and re-boxing artifacts in archivally stable (acid-free) materials is another big part of my job.

Left - Before: wooden post fragments stored in an unlabeled wooden flower box stuffed with newspaper (Photo by Wendi Murray)
Right - After: wooden post fragments stored in an archival box (complete with label!) and wrapped in acid free tissue for padding and support

I get to work with the archaeology volunteers too, and volunteering involves a fun variety of people and projects. The current main project is sorting objects excavated from the Larson Village site into material types so we can send them to specialists who can tell us more about them. I usually sort some of the smaller sized material, but there are amazing things to be found even there.

Left - A tray of small-sized unsorted materials from the Larson Village site
Right - Fun objects can come in small sizes!
Top Row: a piece of copper, 2 biface or projectile point tips
Bottom Row: part of a bone fish hook, (top) the tip of a stone drilling tool, (bottom) the base of a projectile point (“arrow head”), (top) a bone tube bead, (bottom) 2 glass beads

There is a lot of variety in this job. The recent expansion project meant that a lot of time has been devoted to planning the layout, labeling the new shelves, and moving collections to the new storage spaces. One of the most exciting parts of the expansion process was being included in some of the new exhibits planning– there was a lot of proof-reading of labels and texts, documenting conditions of objects coming off and going on display, searching for new or different display objects in our collections, tracking the locations of objects, and carting objects to and from the old and new galleries. I love this because it means bringing collections out where people can see and learn about the North Dakota’s extensive past.

In summary, being an archaeological collections assistant involves a lot of documenting, sorting, and re-housing of artifacts. All this is done to help preserve North Dakota’s state archaeology collections and make them available for present and future use.

Moving priceless objects can be daunting. Depending on the object, simply moving a rare or priceless object from one table to another or even shifting it a few inches or feet can be stressful. Moving thousands of priceless objects over 300 feet is even more daunting; moving priceless objects under a time schedule, even more so; moving priceless objects under a time schedule, through a construction zone, even more yet. However, with proper planning it can be done.

In the early days of planning the Heritage Center expansion it was quickly discovered that the State Fossil Collection was potentially in harm’s way with all the construction going on in and around the building. Not necessarily from a large piece of machinery or debris, but instead from possible exposure to the elements of nature (water and steeply fluctuating temperatures and humidity levels). Both of these elements can wreak havoc on fossils if not properly prepared for. After all the pros and cons of keeping the collection where it was versus moving the collection to an offsite storage facility were weighed and debated, the decision was made to keep the collection in place and protect the collection from any foreseen hazards to the best of our ability.

In this case water was our main concern. A minor concern was vibration from nearby heavy machinery. To protect the fossils from vibration, foam was placed in drawers and between fossils, cradling each fossil (figs. 1 & 2). To protect it from dripping water, the collection was completely covered in plastic sheeting (fig. 3 & 4). Fossils were also removed from the first 12 inches above the floor in case the storage room should flood. The storage room was heavily monitored for any sign of problems over the next few months. Meanwhile a new storage room was being completed and filled with new, state of the art cabinets and storage compactors to house the important collection (fig. 5).

Finally moving day arrived. Due to all the things needing to be done our window to move the collection was small. A team of paleontologists and skilled volunteers moved thousands of fossils over the course of a few days, reorganizing the collection as we moved it.

The project has been completed and the collection receives routine and ongoing maintenance and organization.

Fig. 1 – Paleontologist Amanda Person (left) and paleo intern Samantha Pounds (right) placing foam padding between fossils.

Fig. 2 – Paleontologists Becky Barnes (left) and Amanda Person (right) placing foam padding between fossils.

Fig. 3 – Paleontologist Becky Barnes securing plastic sheeting on top of metal cases containing the ND State Fossil Collection.

Fig. 4 (left) – Metal cabinets containing ND State Fossil Collection covered in plastic to protect from possible water damage.
Fig. 5 (right) – The new cabinets holding the important ND State Fossil Collection.