The historical society reaches 75 years officially in August and will be celebrating again on Aug. 1-2 with its annual Car and Tractor Show.

Northern Bottling Co., which also is observing its 75th anniversary, and the Minot Lions Club and Thomas Family Funeral Home, which are marking their 100th anniversaries, decided to support the anniversary event by participating with information about their organizations for visitors at Pioneer Village Saturday and Sunday, July 11-12.

“We are just really happy to have them join us,” said Sue Bergan with the historical society board.

She said the historical society organized in 1951 and saw its Pioneer Village begin to take shape with the donation of Ward County’s first courthouse from the farmer who had been using it as a grain bin. The courthouse, originally in Burlington, was moved to the first site of Pioneer Village on the state fairgrounds.

JILL SCHRAMM/MDN Minot Lions members, from left, Janet Mathistad and Wenjing Zheng with her daughter Clara Zheng stand at a club display at Pioneer Village in Burlington Saturday, July 11. The 100-year-old Minot Lions Club provided information for the public at a celebration of anniversaries event at the village.

The village was hit hard by the 2011 flood, but the historical society restored the several buildings it had accumulated by then. In 2019, the society moved the village to its current site at Burlington.

The society’s latest focus is the restoration of the historic carousel that once stood in Minot’s Roosevelt Park. Bergan said the society has many other projects it wants to pursue, including a new visitor center. Currently, the Harmon House serves as a visitor center but the desire is to have a dedicated, larger space that could include offices, exhibits and exhibit storage, she said.

Along with the Harmon House, another historic attraction at Pioneer Village is the Samuelson House, originally located in downtown Minot. The Samuelson family purchased the 1910 home in 1921, and their descendents make it back to visit the house on the museum grounds nearly every year.

Johnny and Mary Samuelson of Arden Hills, Minnesota, and their daughter, Heidi, and Barb (Samuelson) Hankla and family of Minot were reliving memories and recalling family stories on Saturday.

John Walfrid Samuelson immigrated from Sweden in 1898. He and his wife, Mary, reared four children – Harlow, Ansel, Alice (Hankla) and Carl Arnold. After the children were grown and left home, John had the upstairs of the Samuelson House converted into a two-bedroom apartment.

JILL SCHRAMM/MDN A horse-drawn hearse restored by Allen Lund of Ross sits on the grounds of Pioneer Village in Burlington. Thomas Family Funeral Home, celebrating its 100th anniversary this year, had the historic hearse on display.

Harlow, was a partner in the Samuelson Shoe store started by his father in 1899 in Minot. He and his wife, Sarah Maxine, had been living next door to the Samuelson House in Minot but around 1950 moved back into the house’s apartment, according to a written history. When the land was needed to make room for Milton Young Towers in 1970, the Samuelson family donated the house to the historical society and had it moved to the fairgrounds.

Johnny Samuelson, a grandson of Harlow, was impressed with the restoration that occurred after the 2011 flood, when water filled the house’s first floor to the ceiling.

“Everything had to be refurbished. It’s an amazing job they did,” he said.

His wife, Mary Samuelson, said the family has donated a number of original items to decorate the house. She said there are additional items they are looking at donating, including family history scrapbooks assembled by her husband’s mother.

Among family stories is that of cousins John Richard Samuelson and Walter Hankla, who enjoyed dropping their matchbox cars down the upstairs laundry chute of their grandparents’ home and then racing downstairs to try to beat the cars to the bottom. They never won that race, according to the story.

Along with the Samuelson House, another draw at the anniversary celebration was the horse-drawn hearse provided by the Lund family in Ross and displayed by Thomas Family Funeral Home. The hearse will be included in the Saturday, July 18, North Dakota State Parade in Minot.

The funeral home plans an open house for Aug. 12 from 4-7 p.m. Wayne Schempp, a Thomas employee, said visitors will be able to tour areas of the funeral home generally not accessed by the public.

“It’s kind of an iconic building. The building itself is over 100 years old,” he said.

Ben Thomas came to Minot in 1926 to open the funeral home, moving from the original downtown location to the former Martin Jacobson residence, built in 1903, at 304 S. Main Street, in 1945. The funeral home continues to be operated by the Thomas family. Bradley and Bryan Thomas currently are among the licensed funeral home directors with the business.

Brad Thomas’ involvement with the Minot Lions was the link bringing both the funeral home and Lions to last weekend’s event.

The Minot Lions will be celebrating its 100th anniversary with a float in the State Parade, and in October, it will host an open house with memorabilia displays and a slideshow. Other Lions clubs locally and from around the state will be invited, said Lions member Barb Hankla.

The International Lions organization is known for its emphasis on vision. Hankla said Lions sponsor low-income vision screening and eyeglasses purchases locally. Clubs also collect used eyeglasses that are sent to Mandan for cataloging and distribution in overseas missions.

“I know someone who went on one to South America,” Hankla said of those mission trips. “They said there’s nothing like seeing a grandma see her baby’s face clearly for the first time.”

In 2025, Lions clubs in Minot collected more than 12,000 pairs of donated glasses. Drop-off locations are located at Johnson Eyecare and Eyewear, Thompson-Larson Funeral Home, Thomas Family Funeral Home, Parker Senior Center, Trinity Vision Galleria ,Sterling Optical, Walmart Optical, Optical Outlook, Eyes on Burdick, Century Eyewear and Dr. Jamie Haaland’s office.

Northern Bottling, founded in 1951 by the Gokey family, is coming into its fourth generation of family ownership, said Chris Bachar, director of sales. The company, whose franchises include Dr. Pepper, Seven-Up and Pepsi-Cola, serves central and western North Dakota, with additional sites in Dickinson and Devils Lake.

“We cover about 47,500 square miles in the state of North Dakota and a little bit of South Dakota,” Bachar said.

Bachar also noted the company is heavily involved in the communities it serves. He listed the secret to 75 years in business as relationships with people in the community.

“That’s a big part of our business, working with people, doing events like this. It means a lot,” he said.

Other weekend activities at Pioneer Village included a pancake breakfast, petting zoo, flag etiquette, a Prairie Quilt Guild exhibit and spinning wheel, soap making and blacksmithing demonstrations.