Bismarck, North Dakota

“ This interest has not been confined to the borders of North Dakota, for the "slender shaft of modernity" which dominates the Bismarck skyline represents a trend in the architecture of State capitols that is gaining the attention of the entire Nation. Because the basic reasons for the skyscraper—exaggerated land values and proximity to transportation centers—are utterly lacking in this capacious prairie State, much criticism has been directed at the type of statehouse chosen. ”

“ Stations were established every 20 miles and all freight was hauled into the Black Hills by wagon, 10 or 12 yoke of "wild Montana cattle" being used to pull trains of two or three wagonloads of freight. Gold seekers flocked to Bismarck, where they outfitted their supply trains before departing for the gold fields. The Bismarck Tribune of October 25, 1879, reported:
"There are no rooms available at the hotels in Bismarck tonight as there are many transients in town bound for the Hills. ”

“ A new grade was built about one mile north, running past Camp Greeley. The Lake Superior and Puget Sound Company, a town site location company auxiliary to the Northern Pacific, was then able to locate another city site which was named Edwinton for Edwin F. Johnson, Northern Pacific chief engineer, but was generally known as "The Crossing." When the Burleightown grade was left unused the town was abandoned and the inhabitants moved to Edwinton. In 1873 the name Bismarck was chosen, but the first title of the town persisted. ”

“ Specializing in seed corn, in which it followed the example of the agricultural Mandan Indians, the company has propagated many new, and acclimated several established, varieties of plants, grain, and nursery stock that are exceptionally hardy, drought resisting, and quick maturing. North of Bismarck are extensive lignite coal deposits, with one of the largest strip mines in the State in north Burleigh County, near Wilton. ”

“ Extension of the railroad westward added to the trade territory, all of which is agricultural, and the city became the logical wholesale distribution point for northwest North Dakota. The arrival of the Soo in 1893 tapped untouched areas southeast and northwest, again enlarging the trade region. The first bus line in the State began operation between Minot and Bismarck in 1922. Truck and bus lines now radiate from Minot to serve the many outlying communities not on the transcontinental railroads. ”

“ Statistics of the U. S. Bureau of Census show North Dakota to have been the only spring wheat State having an increase of population during the period from 1930-35. The growth has been almost entirely rural; from 1920 to 1930 no new urban centers (above 2,500) have appeared in the State.
The State capitol building was destroyed by fire December 28, 1930, and plans were immediately laid for building a new statehouse. A $2,000,000 building, unique in that it is North Dakota's only skyscraper, today stands on Bismarck's Capitol Hill. ”

“ Long before the arrival of the white man, the Mandan Indians found the Bismarck-Mandan area a favorable spot for their homes. Their culture gives this vicinity an interesting archeological background (see Indians and Their Predecessors) . Several village sites of the Mandans and Hidatsa are in this vicinity, and a full-sized model of an earth lodge is constructed on the Capitol grounds. Artifacts, including implements of warfare and agriculture, pottery, and beads, were recovered in these sites and are preserved in the museum of the State historical society. ”

“ A house and garage of this construction erected on the Scoria Lily ranch near Hettinger (see Tour 9) , because of [Pg 105] their unusually low building cost, have attracted wide attention. The use of native boulders as a building material is well illustrated in the Cairn, home of Mr. and Mrs. Clell G. Gannon in Bismarck.
Even with these attempts there is no native North Dakota architecture. The schools, farms, grain elevators, and false-front business buildings are common to the entire Midwest. ”

“ Left from Williston on E. Broadway on a graveled Scenic Highway, following the route of the old overland trail between Bismarck and Fort Buford (see Side Tour 3B) , to the junction with a graded dirt highway at 2.5 m.; R. here across CRAZY MAN'S COULEE, 3 m. One day in the early 1880's Robert Matthews (see above) , the first settler in the region, was seated on the steps of his ranch house just W. of the ravine when he saw a man, dressed in skins and with hair falling to his shoulders, come out of the thickets in the coulee. ”

“ It is a real pleasure to see Bismarck at Varzin among his trees; not during those restless nocturnal wanderings in the park, to which his sleepless illness only too frequently impels him, but when he is pleasantly pointing out his favorites to his guests. It was an event when the North German Chancellor, the summer before last, discovered three magnificent beeches in the midst of a thicket.
On a declivity with a beautiful view, there is a rich deer preserve. Bismarck might even erect a falconry, and hunt with hawks—there are plenty in the Netherlands still. ”

“ In the library door there are three deep cracks, commemorating the presence of evil spirits of any thing but a ghostly nature; they were French soldiers, who in 1806 pursued the young and lovely lady of the mansion, and endeavored to break down the door with their bayonets, when the fugitive had locked it behind her. Bismarck’s father sheltered his wife from the attentions of the children of the “grande nation” in the forest, but his ready money, among which was a considerable sum in louis-d’ors, he buried under the solitary pavilion in the park island. ”

“ It was in this vicinity that Charles Cavileer (see Tour 5) , one of the most prominent settlers of the State, in the 1860's while making a trip with a party from Pembina to Devils Lake, saw a herd of buffalo like a black cloud on the horizon. The party immediately arranged their carts in a semicircle and prepared for an onslaught. The bison came on with a rumble like thunder, the rumble became a roar, and the earth trembled; but when they reached the carts the herd parted and swerved on either side, upsetting only the outside row of the improvised stockade. ”

“ A few months later Napoleon sent to the King of Saxony a special invitation to a European congress; the King at once sent on the invitation to Berlin and let it be known that he did not wish to be represented apart from the North German Confederation. The same leniency was shewn in 1870. Nothing is a better proof of Bismarck's immense superiority both in practical wisdom and in judgment of character. The Liberal Press in Germany had never ceased to revile the German dynasties ”

“ But the point under discussion was evidently nearly as delicate and intricate, for I heard Bismarck say: ‘Well, both you and I have lost some hair—we have therefore one very important point in common—and ought to understand one another all the better.’
The table in the dining saloon was again covered with all the cold delicacies of a true North German kitchen; and again, like last Saturday, a small side-table had been taken possession of by some of the deputies, among whom I noticed the gentlemanly police superintendent Devens of Cologne; the two noble sons of the soil, Evelt and Hosius ”

“ It has been long known that the apartments are not sufficient for the requirements of the service. The Ministerial bureaux, grown too unwieldy for the ground-floor, had to be transferred to another building, scarcely saving much trouble in the transaction of business. The apartments form a very fitting dwelling-place for a nobleman in private life, but are by no means suitable for the Prussian Prime Minister and Chancellor of the North German Federation. Bismarck has naturally felt this inconvenience more than any one else ”

“ Many men would have swept away everything which existed, made a clear field, and begun to build up a new State from the foundations. Bismarck was much too wise to attempt this, for he knew that the foundations of political life cannot be securely laid by one man or in one generation. ”

“ The bold attitude with which he entered the arena revealed to his opponents that the unknown Dyke Captain from the banks of the Elbe was not a man to be undervalued by them; this they did not do; and the fierce irony with which they, with more or less talent, overwhelmed him, betrayed the fact that in this Junker the Crown had found a mighty defender.
When the second United Diet took place, the enemy of the kingdom was no longer liberalism, but democracy, and Bismarck met this foe with the most unhesitating conviction. ”

“ Additional land could be obtained by buying up grants to soldiers in the United States Army. Military land warrants could be purchased for a nominal price, often as low as 50 cents an acre.
At first, despite the ease of obtaining land, there was no great influx of settlers into the new land. The Nation was in the grip of the Civil War, and Indian troubles in the West not only discouraged new settlement but frightened out many who had already made their homes there. Writers who had visited the Territory depicted it as "a land of blizzards and Indians, drought and grasshoppers." ”

“ Dominating the silhouette of these little villages were the grain elevators, those bright sentinels which symbolized the reason for the towns' founding, and still remain the most typical buildings in the North Dakota picture today. Like tall men standing head and shoulders above a crowd, they rise 60 to 70 feet above the low prairie. First glimpsed as any town comes into sight is the row of wedge-shaped cupolas, like arrowheads in profile, topping the almost square red, green, or maroon shafts. ”

“ For the Indians who once inhabited this region, hunting the buffalo was an activity in which the entire community participated. The buffalo had almost disappeared when a young man named Theodore Roosevelt came to Dakota from the East to regain his health; but big game was still plentiful, for his books tell of hunting not only bison, but also deer, mountain sheep, elk, antelope, wolf, coyote, and grizzly bear. Despite the vanishing of the big game, North Dakota still has excellent hunting. ”

“ All the resistance of authority was overthrown; nothing, it seemed, stood between them and the attainment of their ideal of a united and free Germany. They had achieved a revolution; they had become a political people; they had shewn themselves the equals of England and of France. They had liberty, and they would soon have a Constitution. Bismarck did not share this feeling; he saw only that the monarchy which he respected, and the King whom, with all his faults, he loved and honoured, were humiliated and disgraced. This was worse than Jena. A defeat on the field of battle can be avenged ”

“ At the beginning of statehood North Dakota had been subject to a rather autocratic form of government in spite of decidedly democratic constitutional provisions. The State had been economically dependent on the East. The directing powers in the early State government were centered in St. Paul and Minneapolis. Eastern wealth had furnished capital for the railroads, and the railroads had been responsible for the settlement of the State. ”

“ ND 1 south of Valley City traverses the rolling plain—part of the Height of Land—that lies between the Sheyenne and the James Rivers. The northern end of the route runs near the Sheyenne, while its southern course roughly parallels the James. Near the southern border of the State the highway runs across the level bed of glacial Lake Dakota, a small part of which extended into present North Dakota. This lake existed before Lake Agassiz, in the valley of the James River, which was in existence before the second ice age. Along the entire route pheasants are plentiful. ”

“ In contradistinction to the wise, ambitious, but somewhat haughty mother, his father, a handsome, personable, and cheerful man, full of humor and wit, rather represented the heart and mind, without very great claims to strong intellect, or even knowledge. Strangely enough, the cultivated and literary Charles Alexander von Bismarck, transformed from a diplomatist into a cavalry officer by the command of the Great Frederick, educated his four sons for the army. ”

“ Whether he sat in his library amidst his books and maps, roved as a solitary sportsman through his preserves in field or wood, turned to agricultural pursuits with the eye of a proprietor, or visited his neighbors in Jerichow or Kattenwinkel, he felt an intuitive perception of some great and decisive event about to come. Men so politically eminent as Bismarck even then was—although he had not, as yet, evinced it in public—bear within them a certain foreshadowing of coming events not to be under-estimated. ”

“ For four years more the alliance was continued.
At this time all other questions were thrown into the shade by the great conflict with the Roman Catholic Church on which the Government had embarked. Looking back now, it is still difficult to judge or even to understand the causes which brought it about. Both sides claim that they were acting in self-defence. Bismarck has often explained his motives, but we cannot be sure that those he puts forward were the only considerations by which he was moved. He, however, insisted that the struggle was not religious but political ”

“ Therefore, gentlemen, do not let us spoil the people of their Christianity; do not let us take from them the belief that our legislation is drawn from the well of Christianity, and that the State aims at the realisation of Christianity even if it does not attain its end."
We can well understand how delighted Herr von Thadden was with his pupil. "With Bismarck I naturally will not attempt to measure myself," he writes; "in the last debates he has again said many admirable things"; and in another letter, "I am quite enthusiastic for Otto Bismarck." ”