Throughout 2026, the ND250 Commission, administered by the State Historical Society of North Dakota, is leading the state’s commemoration of the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States. Through meaningful, inclusive, and inspiring projects and events, the commission ...

In 1662 Spain dispatched ships to retrieve plunder taken from numerous South American countries and delivered it to Panama City by mule trains. So massive were the treasures of gold, silver, gems, copper, indigo and tobacco, it took two months to document and load all goods onto the ships ...

The story of America tells of only one state carved out of another during the Civil War – West Virginia – and in the mid-1800s, the flourishing riverside city of Wheeling found itself at the epicenter of that pivotal moment in U.S. history. A thriving economic base had been taking root in ...

On the fourth page of his Villard Leader newspaper for Saturday, July 3, 1886, Richard Copeland wrote that the mail route from Villard to Washburn was “the first one established in this portion of Dakota and has been in operation four years. Robert Shaw of Washburn, now gone to his final ...

When McHenry County was created in 1873, it was not as large as it is today. Its original boundaries went from Towner and Buffalo Lodge Lake in the north to Anamoose in the south, and from Orrin and Aylmer in the west to Velva in the east. This area had long been visited by Native Americans, ...

To have a United States of America during its infancy, you had to have a truly united country. Not just by national unity with its citizens, but by physically connecting the east with what was then the western frontier across the Allegheny Mountains. Or at least that’s what President George ...