School Hill marked the end of John Christiansen’s journey west. He was a 21-year-old German immigrant riding a freight train with three horses, lumber, machinery and goods belonging to him and other men, who would be arriving later from Wisconsin.

One hundred years ago, serial stories of the war, such as “Over the Top” as well as Associated Press articles, provided details of life in the front line trenches, creating a vivid picture of the war for people back home.

The first Dakota baseball players were soldiers who brought the game from the east. By the time North Dakota became a state, nearly every small town had a team.

A reference to Coal Country usually evokes images of the hills of West Virginia or Kentucky. Rarely does North Dakota leap to mind.

On this date in 1912, the Dickinson Press announced that the new St. Joseph’s Hospital would be dedicated the following day at three o’clock.

The first 14,000 American troops arrived in France on June 26, 1917, but most of the American forces arrived the following year. By July 1918 there were one million American soldiers in Europe.

In March of 1916, snowfall combined with a spring thaw caused rising water and ice along the Missouri and Little Muddy rivers. In the midst of these conditions, a herd of deer became stranded on river ice outside of Williston

Throughout the first year after America entered the war in 1917, the War Department maintained a strict censorship on the news from France. To keep the public informed, there were brief war news presentations from the Committee on Public Information by the Four Minute Men.

The tallest buildings in N.D. towns, historically, have been churches and grain elevators. Faithful people built the churches upon their arrival in Dakota, but who built the grain elevators?

In 1918, with the casualty lists now containing the names of North Dakota soldiers, any anti-war sentiment was not to be tolerated. The Fargo Forum had warned back in November of 1917, that news of wounds and death would stifle dissent in homes across the state. Tensions ran high, and North Dakota residents of German birth had to be extremely cautious of the slightest word or deed that might imply loyalty to Kaiser Wilhelm’s Germany. According to Judge John Knauf from Jamestown, people who