A Quick Lesson in North Dakota History

We had only one day in Bismark, as we are heading down to Albuquerque for the balloon festival and need to be there by October 1.  So, after long internet- and soul-searching, as well as consultations with the campground hosts, we decided to focus our visit on the North Dakota Heritage Center and State Museum.  Recently renovated, it has a striking modern exterior:

In the photo above, the large round boulders among which Kathy is cavorting are called "cannonball concretions," which are large spherical concretions, found along the Cannonball River (wonder where that name came from?) within Morton and Sioux Counties, North Dakota.  They were created by early cementation of sand and silt by calcite and can reach nearly 10 feet in diameter.

Also displayed in the plaza of the museum are PARTIALLY petrified ancient tree trunks.  The insides of them are solid stone, but the outsides are still dry wood.  Looking at a cross-section of one of the logs, as in the photo below, you can see and touch a physical transition from wood to stone as these logs mineralized from the inside out:

The North Dakota Heritage Center is also home to "Dakota the Dino-Mummy," an unfortunate Edmontosaurus (duck-billed) that was about 26 feet long and weighted over 3 tons.  It apparently fell into river silt in the era just before the dinosaurs became extinct, and, due to its quick submersion, was mummified, skin, organs and all, before its remains were replaced by minerals.  The resulting fossil still shows the original skin of the dinosaur.

Dakota was discovered in 1999 by a teenager who was fossil-hunting on his uncle's ranch in North Dakota.  Despite enormous interest in the fossil from institutions world-wide, the family wanted the fossil to remain in North Dakota, and so here it rests.  Below, David is getting to know Dakota, up close and personal.

The museum has an entire exhibit on prehistoric animal life, which is quite excellent.  In addition to the obligatory triceratops and T-Rex models, there are also some very unusual fossils and models unique to the geology in this area:

The museum also has a notable exhibit on the native American inhabitants of the area.  The exhibits trace each of the nations and tribes that lived or moved through this area, from their earliest known times to the arrival of the Europeans in the 1700's.

We later supplemented our museum visit with a trip over to Chief Looking's Village, the site of a Mandan village on a bluff overlooking the Missouri River:

This site is one of the few Native American village sites that remains undisturbed from the time it was last occupied.  While the structures have long decayed because they were made of natural materials, large and distinct depressions in the ground make it easy to trace the outlines of the village and the locations of various specific buildings and stockades.  Standing atop the bluff where the village stood, it is easy to see why the Mandan used this as a summer headquarters, because it commands a 360 degree view of the surrounding territory, including unimpeded views up and down the Missouri River.

One notable member of the Mandan tribe is memorialized in Bismarck - Sakakawea (often called Sacajawea), was a Lemhi Shoshone woman who accompanied the Lewis and Clark Expedition as an interpreter and guide during their exploration of the Western United States. With the expedition between 1804 and 1806, she traveled thousands of miles from North Dakota to the Pacific Ocean.  As a child, she had been captured by the Mandan and raised as one of them.  When Lewis & Clark arrived at Fort Mandan, their winter quarters in this area, they met Sacajawea and her husband, Toussaint Charbonneau, a Quebecois trapper living in the village. He also had taken another young Shoshone as wife. Charbonneau was reported to have purchased both wives from the Hidatsa, or to have won Sacagawea while gambling.  However it happened, Sacajawea accompanied Lewis and Clark on their expedition, and was instrumental in their meeting, communicating and keeping peace with the Native American tribes they met as they headed West.

The statue in the photo below was sculpted by Leonard Crunelle (1910), showing Sacajawea with baby Pomp.  It stands on the grounds of the North Dakota State Capitol.  In 2003, the State of North Dakota selected a replica of the statue to be installed in the National Statuary Hall Collection in the United States Capitol as the one figure to represent the state.

The Heritage Museum also boasts an exhibit on cultural life in North Dakota since the beginning of settlement by Europeans.  As you can imagine, farming dominates the story, including this bull tractor --

-- but the exhibit also tells the story to date of mining and oil/gas extraction, which has become a major industry in North Dakota.

One aspect of the exhibit on European settlement that fascinated us was the story of the extensive German and Scandinavian settlement of the area.  The exhibit notes that many recent immigrants, in contrast, have come countries such as Azerbaijan, Bhutan, Bosnia, India, Kurdistan, Somalia, South Sudan and Vietnam, making Bismark and the entire state more diverse than we would have first imagined.

Before we left the museum, we watched a documentary film about Theodore Roosevelt's years in North Dakota.  When he came to the Dakota Territory to hunt bison in 1883, he was a skinny, young, spectacled dude from New York. He could not have imagined how his adventure in this remote and unfamiliar place would forever alter the course of the nation. The rugged landscape and strenuous life that TR experienced here would help shape a conservation policy that we still benefit from today.   The 218 acre Elkhorn Ranch Unit is part of Theodore Roosevelt National Park.  Because it lies approximately 4 hours west of Bismarck, we weren't able to visit the park or the ranch, but we've added it to a sizeable list of places to visit when we return to western North Dakota.

Outside the museum, we got unimpeded views of the relatively new North Dakota State Capitol Building, which our friends Ginny and Eric Lajuene describe in more detail in their travel blog, "Walkabout With Wheels."

After our adventure, we satisfied our hunger and thirst at the Blarney Stone Irish Pub downtown in Bismarck.  It was about a half mile walk from the Capitol Grounds.  This was a GENUINE Irish pub, from its traditional interior --

-- to its menu of new twists on traditional Irish dishes, with a mix of other great pubby food items. We found a great Stone's Throw Scottish Ale from local Fargo Brewing Company.  We had spectacular veggie panninis, and Dave scored with a side of "creamed cabbage" that was truly Irish: cabbage cooked in whole cream, the way we loved it when we visited Dublin!  We were already so full from that, that we had to pass on an extraordinary dessert:  Jameson Irish Bread Pudding - Cinnamon, Nutmeg and Vanilla, topped with Irish Whiskey Sauce, Ice Cream and Whipped Cream. You can't imagine how we regretted not ordering that dessert.

We walked to and from lunch through the city of Bismarck.  Suffice it to say that if you imagine "Main Street USA," you'll have an accurate impression of Bismarck.  Add dozens of houses of worship serving maybe 10 different German religious sects.  Then, every once in a while, a quirky touch to some of the uniformly neat and well-kept, modest homes:

We finished the day sorry we don't have more time to get deeper into the geology, ecology, history and culture of this area.