Reliving Old Memories in North Dakota

The National Buffalo Museum and surrounding attractions are located just off I-94 in Jamestown, ND. Attractions include the World’s Largest Buffalo Monument, Frontier Village, and live buffalo.

We did not actually go inside of the National Buffalo Museum, but we did visit the gift shop inside the building. It was kind of interesting to look at the stuff for sale. There were all kinds of buffalo souvenirs to the traditional postcards and magnets to buffalo shaped car freshener. You can see some of what the Prairie Winds Gift Shop has to offer at its website (www.buffalomuseum.com).

Frontier Village is a preserved Old West prairie town. Most, if not all, of the buildings are authentic buildings preserved and brought together from different parts of the state of North Dakota. When it is not winter you can ride stagecoaches and ponies. You can also go inside most of the buildings during the non-winter months. Even though you cannot go inside the buildings in the winter it is still fun to walk around and peak inside the windows. My favorite building was the post office. Inside you can see some original Post Office Boxes that were used in Windsor, ND from 1894 to 1975. The building itself was once a small tar paper covered home.

The most outstanding thing here is the World’s Largest Buffalo statue. It was sculpted in 1959 by Elmer Paul Peterson. It measures 46 feet long, 26 feet high, and 14 feet wide. It weighs 60 tons.

When I was younger, I went on the 17-hour drive from Illinois to nearby Stanley, North Dakota, every summer to spend some time at my great grandpa's farm. Since his death in 1996, I have only been back two or three times. On this visit back to North Dakota for my great grandma's funeral, we decided to stop at the places in and around Stanley to take pictures of some of the places that represent memories. For me it was important to bring photos back to my little brother, who never really experienced Stanley, and is always asking for pictures to go with the stories we tell.

Our first stop was to take photos of the family farm outside of Ross, near Stanley. Here was where we always stayed. We reminisced about the time spent there from watching the calf branding to the postman that always stopped for his coffee break and pass the latest news on to Great Grandpa, who by that time did not leave the farm much. Also, nearby we took pictures of a small old deteriorating barn that my cousin wanted to use as an example of where Vincent R. Moser lived, as I had inherited some newsletters mailed to this neighbor of my great grandma and we forgot to take a picture of the actual still standing shack he lived in near Williston.

The most important stop in town was the Dakota Drug Store, where we stopped after taking pictures of the Old Brick House that our Great Great Grandmother once owned and sold the front yard to a now abandoned gas station. At Dakota Drug they still have their original soda fountain. It is also home to the only surviving Whirla Whip machine that is still being used. For that large crowd that has never had or heard of a Whirla Whip it is an ice cream treat that has candies or other things mixed in it. It is similar to a McDonald's McFlurry, but much better. You can have the base ice cream as chocolate, vanilla, or rainbow sherbet (this produces what seems to be more ice cream because it allows more air in to it when mixed. Just a few items you can mix into the ice cream are peanut butter, dill pickles, watermelon candies, and Oreo cookies. After our delicious Whirla Whips and purchasing "I had a Whirla Whip in Stanley, ND" t-shirt, which must be a relatively new item, we headed back on the road.

Along our often-traveled route through North Dakota we made many stops along the way just to take photos. Some were of places we had seen before, but never photographed. Some photos were taken to compare with old photographs. A few photos were of new things, since our last visit.

Quite a few of our stops involved my cousin, Kirsten, photographing run-down shacks and barns. Kirsten is going to take the photos to school to see how many of her Chicago suburban friends will believe that people still live in them. The funny thing is they probably will believe that many North Dakotans live in these old houses that literally could blow down tomorrow. In fact she has one slightly blurry photo she is going to try to pass off as the wind was blowing the house and her hands were still. She then took a picture of a field with a brown area to tell them that the house fell down after she took the first photograph. We had a blast making up stories such as some old wagons are how everyone gets around still.

Photographs that were taken to compare to old photographs, involve three giant statues. The last time Kirsten and I were photographed in front of these statues was when we brought our friend with to North Dakota almost a decade ago. The first statue was of the couple story tall Indian Chief that is in front of the Chieftain Hotel in Carrington, ND, along US 52. The second statue was the World’s Largest Buffalo statue, which is found on the north side of I-94 in Jamestown, ND. (You can find more info on the Buffalo and surrounding attractions in another entry in this journal.) The third statue was in Rothsay, MN. It is a giant chicken that can be found just off I-94 at Exit 38. For this one we had to trek through about a foot and a half-deep snow for about a quarter-mile, which for us added to the fun.

Another one of our photo stops was to photograph some energy gathering windmills, which I do not remember being there before. We also stopped to photograph an old church that was for sale. Kirsten decided that she is going to tell her friends that it is the church she is going to buy. Not sure if she means she is going to restore it as a Lutheran church or remodel it into a house; that is, if it is still for sale when she is ready to settle down and if she really wants to live in North Dakota.