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NORTH
DAKOTA has no
nationally recognizable landmarks, nor is
the state’s history particularly lurid or
glamorous. It seems like somebody’s quiet
afterthought, a place to pass through.
Grain silos loom on the horizon; the
haystacks resemble loaves of bread. In the
summer, with the sun baking in a defiantly
blue sky and the wind raking strong
fingers through tall fields of golden
wheat and flax, North Dakota epitomizes
all things rural American. Charming,
picturesque – and a bit maddening.
The
influx of Europeans into the Dakota
Territory, spurred by the Homestead Act of
1862, precipitated a population and
agricultural boom that lasted into the
twentieth century. As in South Dakota, the
fertile east is more thickly settled than
the west, where vast cattle and sheep
ranges predominate, and it was the east
that was hardest hit by the so-called
500-year flood of 1997, when 1.7
million low-lying acres of farmland were
inundated, and the entire state was
declared a disaster area; visitor
facilities are now even thinner on the
ground than ever. From Fargo, the
state’s largest city, I-94 passes through
the central capital of Bismarck,
and on to the Bad Lands of the
west, once cherished by President Theodore
Roosevelt. Though the national park
bearing his name is a key destination,
Roosevelt would surely not be pleased
about the continuing disfiguration of much
of western North Dakota by strip mining
operations.
Click here to go to North Dakota
State web site |
