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Max G. Taubert of
Casselton built a 50 foot high pyramid of empty oil cans in 1933.
Believed to be the highest oil can structure in the world, it was built
on a site that once occupied a Sinclair gas station. The
"attraction” is located north west of Casselton on exit I-94.
North Dakota
was the first state to complete its Interstate highway system.
North Dakota
hosts almost fifty local and regional rodeos that attract hundreds of
cowboys each year.
The coast line around
Lake Sakawea in
North Dakota
is longer than the California coastline along the Pacific Ocean.
During the
Lewis and
Clark
expedition, each of the men ate 9-12 pounds of meat per day while staying
at Fort Mandan in order to stay warm.
It wasn’t until 1987 that
North Dakota
passed a making English the official state language.
Dakota Gasification
Company in Beulah is the nation's only synthetic natural gas producer.
Two granite boulders
inscribed with thunderbird figures are exhibited at Writing Rock State
Historic Site located twelve miles northeast of Grenora. Giving the
site its name, the drawings probably represent the Thunderbird, a
mythological figure sacred to Late Prehistoric Plains
Indians.
Devils Lake is the
largest natural body of water in
North Dakota .
Deriving its name from the Native American word, Miniwaukan, early
explorers incorrectly translated the word to mean Bad Spirit.
10,000 years ago, the
state's eastern edge was a vast glacial lake bed.
Theodore Roosevelt
National Park in western
North Dakota
is the only national park named for a person. As president, Theodore
Roosevelt was instrumental in founding the national park system.
North Dakota
has 6 national sites, 56 state historic sites, 18 state parks, and more
than 150 museums. 5 of the 150 museums are Dinosaur museums.
Jamestown boasts the
world’s largest buffalo at 26 feet tall and 36 feet long. Weighing
in at some sixty tons, the concrete bison located at Frontier Village
guards the grain elevator with its unblinking eyes.
Turtle Lake celebrates
turtles, hard-shelled reptiles often found in the water. Turtle Lake has
erected a two-ton sculpture of a turtle near the entrance to the city. The
town is the home of the annual United States Turtle Racing Championship.
The
Lewis and
Clark expedition encountered their first grizzly bears in
North Dakota.
The piles of rock on
White Butte,
North Dakota's
highest point, are known of as rock johnnies or sheepherder's monuments
and according to legend were piled there by sheepherders as a way to pass
the time while they tended their flocks.
The Big Hidatsa village
site was occupied from about 1740 to 1850 and is the largest of three
Hidatsa communities near the mouth of the Knife River. It is believed to
contain the best-defined earth lodge depressions of any major Native
American site in the Great Plains.
Lawrence Welk, Angie
Dickinson and Dorothy Stickney are from
North Dakota .
North Dakota
has 60 wildlife refuges, more than any other state, and all are managed
for waterfowl production.
More ducks reproduce in
North Dakota
wetlands than anywhere in the nation.
North Dakota
has more miles of road per capita than any other state - approximately
166 miles of road for every 1,000 people.
If
North Dakota
seceded from the Union, it would be the world's third strongest nuclear
power.
President Theodore
Roosevelt first came to Dakota Territory in September 1883 to hunt
buffalo. Before returning home to New York, he became interested in the
cattle business and established the Maltese Cross and Elkhorn Ranches.
If you wear a hat while
dancing in Fargo, you can be jailed. In fact, if you even wear a hat
to a place where dancing is going on, you are tempting the law.
On the
Lewis and
Clark
expedition, the men spent the most amount of time in what is now
North Dakota .
Fort Union Trading Post was the principal
fur-trading depot in the Upper Missouri River region from 1829 to 1867.
Compiled and
edited by
Kathy Weiser/Legends
of America, updated March,
2010.
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