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 home, brought the first mail to the Mouse River on August 8, 1882.” Mary Ann Barnes Williams gives the names of four other men who delivered the mail to Villard in the 1880s. They included Nels Martenson, Holbrook, J. W. McKnight and Harry Stroud. She recounts a somewhat unnerving experience that ...
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, who left signs of their presence there in the forms of several types of burials and myriads of tepee rings formed by circles of stones which indicated where the various tribes had had their camp sites. There were also a number of well used trails that were etched into the landscape, particularly ...
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 ...
