NORTH DAKOTA

Theodore Roosevelt Nat’l Park

The park, located just outside Dickinson, ND, includes three separate areas and is the home of the state’s Badlands. Above and left, the view from a rest stop off Hwy 90.

Dickinson

Fun Facts: From 2006-2015, as a result of the oil boom, Dickinson was one of the fastest growing cities in the U.S. By 2020, however, the number of oil rigs in the area had dropped by 80 percent, according to the North Dakota Department of Oil Resources. North Dakota still is second only to Texas in American oil production, according to Reuters.

In February 1949, Jack Kerouac was on a cross-country journey that inspired his novel On the Road (1957). Stuck on a bus during a blizzard in Dickinson, Kerouac describes the scene:

“Another eastbound bus was stuck, and many cars. The cause of the congestion was a small panel truck carrying slot machines to Montana. Eager young men with shovels came from the little town of Dickinson, most of them wearing red baseball caps, led by the sheriff, a strong joyous boy of twenty-five or so. Some of the boys were fourteen, even twelve.

I thought of their mothers and wives waiting at home with hot coffee, as though the traffic jam in the snow was an emergency touching Dickinson itself.

Is this the “isolationist” Middle West? Where in the effete-thinking East would men work for others, for nothing, at midnight in howling, freezing gales?”

Seventy-two years later, Jonny Diamond, writing for Literary Hub, looks askance at Kerouac’s fetishization of the white middle class:

Minus the self-loathing use of “effete” this reads like the breathless copy of a Beltway pundit once again wringing his hands over the Democratic establishment’s disconnection from hardworking, rural white America (and its implicit moral solidity). This, of course, is horseshit.

It’s also a little strange coming from a working class, first-generation kid like Kerouac, who grew up in the kind of Massachusetts mill town that surely would have given rise to such scenes of selfless, collective work in aid of the common good.” Jack Kerouac fetishized the white working class almost as much as a NY Times reporter. ‹ Literary Hub (lithub.com)

TOP left: The house across from my Airbnb; MIDDLE left: Tight parking next to The Brew. BELOW left: Thrift shop Jesus. I’m quite sureI heard him say, “You guys do know I don’t look like this, right?”

ABOVE Right: Sunset over my Airbnb; MIDDLE right : The Brew Coffeehouse, in a converted 1887 church; BOTTOM right: Exterior, The Brew

Bismarck

From the 1500s to the 1700s, this area was occupied by some 10,000 to 20,000 Mandan people, a nation of farmers who lived in lodges dug from the earth, supported and roofed with sticks and mud. The Mandan, who spoke Hidatsa, called this land by the river mirahacii arumaaguash ("Place of the tall willows"). One remaining Mandan site is Chief Looking’s Village, now a city park.

White settlers came here in 1872, naming it first Missouri Crossing (Lewis and Clark crossed here). Soon, the railroad reached the Missouri River and the town was renamed Edwinton, after a chief engineer for the Northern Pacific Railway; the town’s economy long depended on the railroad.

The population surged in 1874 after gold was discovered in the nearby Black Hills.

Population (2021): 74,000 Ethic makeup: 90% White, 2.7% African American, 4.3% Native American

Why Bismarck?

In 1873, some marketing genius, hoping to attract German immigrants, renamed the town after then-German chancellor Otto Von Bismarck. Bismarck sent a note of thanks, but no cash. Germans did indeed immigrate here, but most of these were the descendents of Germans who had immigrated to Russia in the 18th century. Today, more than half of people with German ancestry in North Dakota consider themselves Russian Germans. This explains this, to me, oddly niche organization near my hotel. Source: Bismarck/ND: Germans from Russia in North Dakota | Culture | Arts, music and lifestyle reporting from Germany | DW | 29.10.2001

ABOVE: The still-grand Bismarck Depot, completed in 1901 by the Northern Pacific Railroad, was designed in the Spanish mission style common in his western depots, but rare in the Midwest. Rail traffic declined in the 1950s when cars took over, and the depot was abandoned in 1975. Since then, the building has housed a Mexican restaurant and a brewery. By July 2022, the building had been resold and was being renovated for businesses yet to be named. Even on a midsummer Saturday night, sidewalks were empty here, though large SUVs and pickups, apparently with their mufflers removed, roared by constantly.

ABOVE: Old Liberty Memorial Bridge (1922), taken from New Liberty Memorial Bridge (2008)

LEFT and ABOVE: Sunset over the Missouri River, taken from the new Liberty Memorial Bridge. BELOW: Old Liberty Memorial Bridge, taken from the shore

Bismarck to Crystal Springs

Hay bales, squat metal silos, wooden silos and barns are everywhere in rural North Dakota — and it’s mostly rural. The cafe was just off the highway in tiny Tappan; the tern? flew over a canal at a rest stop near Crystal Springs.