Dakota Datebook

On this date in 1922, Loretta Lang was born in Williston, North Dakota. After graduation, Loretta worked for the Williston Press-Graphic newspaper. On New Year’s Day in 1942, Loretta married Stanley Lord before he joined the Navy. Stanley was sent to the Pacific war front, and Loretta moved to the West Coast.

May is National Historic Preservation Month. Today, we’re highlighting some of the historic places included in North Dakota’s State Historic Sites Registry.

When settlers arrived on the Great Plains, communication was slow. Mail was delivered by stagecoach and took days to arrive. Mail arrived faster by Pony Express than by stagecoach. Riders galloped from St. Joseph, Missouri, to Sacramento, California, making the journey in ten days. The Pony Express did not do well on the northern Great Plains. In 1860, the route ran from Grand Portage in Minnesota through Fargo and out to Medora. It came to a quick end when severe winter weather made the journey virtually impossible.

In December 1856, Henry Rice presented an enabling act to Congress that would allow Minnesota to begin the process of becoming a state. He based his proposal on Minnesota’s rapid population growth. The bill easily passed the House of Representatives, but the Senate was another story.

In 1883, Buffalo Bill’s Wild West went on tour. The show combined theater, circus, and rodeo. It was inspired by Cody’s experiences as a Pony Express rider and Army scout, and it romanticized an American West that was already disappearing. Spectators flocked to the show, which included a buffalo herd, sharpshooter Annie Oakley, and reenactments of stagecoach robberies. It also featured a band of Native Americans, including Chief Sitting Bull. The Native performers welcomed the chance to leave the reservation and return to riding, and they were paid as well as the white performers.

Colonel Dwight D. Eisenhower led the 1919 Transcontinental Motor Convoy, a venture designed to test whether military units could move across the United States using motor vehicles. The convoy crossed the Great Plains and the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific Ocean, completing the 3,251-mile journey from Washington, D.C., to San Francisco in 62 days but not without difficulty.

May is National Historic Preservation Month. Today, we’re highlighting some of the historic places listed in North Dakota’s State Historic Sites Registry.

Mail order catalogs are nothing new — they have been a staple of Americana for well over a century. Perhaps the most famous is the Sears catalog. Starting in 1888, Sears, Roebuck and Co. has sold an amazing array of items, from coal stoves to video games, power tools to ready-to-assemble homes. Yes, homes!

In 1862, Dakota Territory passed a law prohibiting food and drug adulteration. By 1885, a territory-wide board of health had been created. But public health was still lacking.

Some of us are old enough to remember making little paper baskets, filling them with candy, placing them on doorsteps, ringing the doorbell, and running away to avoid being kissed on May 1. Another local tradition was the annual May Day festival at Wahpeton Indian School.