July 13, 2006

Great Plains Roadtrip: North Dakota History

After leaving Deadwood last Wednesday we drove up into North Dakota and went to Theodore Roosevelt National Park where we hiked the short Ridgeline Trail. It gave us a great view of the badlands. The park does a good job of linking TR's later life to his experiences in North Dakota as a young man. The park also liberally uses their favorite Roosevelt quote: "I never would have been President if it had not been for my experiences in North Dakota." It's probably the most flattering thing anyone has ever said about the state. After a bit more driving we spent the night in Dickinson.

Thursday was the most interesting day of the trip because it dealt with family history. First, we visited Fort Union Trading Post National Historic Site which is significant because Toussaint Charbonneau - husband of Sacagawea - is a distant cousin. I have another distant (and I stress the word "distant" here) cousin who committed an atrocious crime in the same region 75 years ago. I won't go into detail here; let's just say that the locals that we met at the nearby museum were quite excited to meet relatives of one of the most heinous criminals in North Dakota history.

After creeping ourselves out by walking in my cousin's footsteps we headed southeast, stopping at Knife River Indian Villages National Historic Site. The area was home to several thousand members of the Hidatsa tribe until the late 1800s. I was surprised to learn that the Hidatsa were not all that different from the Apalachee who I learned about in Florida. I was even more surprised when I bumped into Dr. Tom Isern, who was one of my professors at North Dakota State University. He was leading a group of teachers into Canada and they had stopped at the villages for a quick visit.

The remainder of the trip was uneventful. We spent Thursday night in Bismarck and then drove I-94 all the way to the Twin Cities on Friday. Many people would consider a road trip through the great plains pretty boring but it was actually a lot of fun. We saw some beautiful landscape and got a good taste of history as well.

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July 7, 2006

Great Plains Roadtrip: Haverhill to Deadwood

On Monday we left Haverhill, IA and headed north. We stopped in two tiny towns, Ayershire and Graettinger, to look for the gravesites of some relatives on my dad's side of the family. The cemeteries were outside the towns, usually bordered on all sides by fields, making for pleasant strolls amongst the headstones.

The remainder of Monday was relatively uneventful. We spent the night in a deserted downtown Sioux Falls. Presumably most people had the day off in expectation of Independence Day. We walked around for a while and I got a few good photos at dusk.

On the Fourth of July we drove west towards the badlands. Of course no visit to South Dakota would be complete without a stop at Wall to see the world famous Wall Drug - a uniquely American souvenir stand which has very little cultural value whatsoever but holds a high rank in the pantheon of roadside attractions - the Zeus amongst large animal statues and other assorted highway oddities.

Our next stop was Badlands National Park, the point where the rolling prairies plunge into striated rock formations. We had all seen Mt. Rushmore before, as recently as last year for me, and we didn't feel like dealing with the Independence Day madness so we spent a quiet Fourth in Rapid City, the so-called "City of Presidents". They've commissioned local artists to create lifesize bronze sculptures of all the presidents. They're placed on the streetcorners in the downtown area and are a nice addition to the city. We had dinner at the Firehouse Brewery where I had a very good stout and a not-so-good steak.

We started north on Wednesday and had to stop in Deadwood. I'm a big fan of the HBO series so it was interesting to see the real town. It's not like it was during the Old West - many of the buildings from that era were destroyed by fire - but it is one of the largest historic preservation districts in the country. Unfortunately, most of the buildings are casinos. The main drag doesn't really have any interesting stores like Virginia City, NV does. We also visited Wild Bill Hicock and Calamity Jane's graves in Mt. Moriah cemetery before heading north to the other Dakota.

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July 4, 2006

Great Plains Roadtrip: Haverhill, IA

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I arrived in Minneapolis late Saturday night and went straight to bed, then hit the road on Saturday for the drive to Haverhill, IA, a very small town which is the ancestral home of my mom's side of the family. It's just outside Marshalltown and, although none of my family lives there now, it's where my great grandparents are buried so it was chosen as the site of this year's family gathering.

Haverhill, although it only has a population of about one hundred people (and that's probably pushing it) has a historic blacksmith shop which was started by a German immigrant named Matthew Edel in the 1880s. It's on the National Register of Historic Places and was one of the sites that we stopped at in a walk around town. The shop has been nearly untouched since 1940 (as the photos will attest) - exactly the kind of place that I love taking photos of. As our family looked around the shop, someone discovered the name of my great-great-grandfather written on a piece of cardboard on the ceiling. There was a metal rod attached to the beam and that's where his horseshoes would've been hung once the blacksmith had finished making them. It was pretty exciting to see a concrete link to my own personal past in this historic building.

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