North Dakota Weather Forecast

Some Interesting Facts about North Dakota

Amid sweeping plains and lush Missouri River forests, this rough--riding country has a beauty all it own--raw, clean, and vast. Cross the Big Muddy and time-travel deep into the Old West.

Bismarck; chew the fat with North Dakotans, and they'll convince you that the Old West starts in the middle of the "Big Muddy," the mighty Missouri River, flanked by the capital city of Bismarck on the East and the town of Mandan on the West. " Here is where the map should fold". John Steinbeck once wrote. The striking contrasts between the East and west sides of the river were underscored on a Mandan Indian legend wherein the region was developed by two Creators, each with his own landscaping plan.

Area: 70704 sq.mi, 19th Land 68994 sq. mi., 17th - Water 1710 sq.mi

Agriculture: Wheat, cattle, barley, sunflowers, milk, sugar beets.

Industry: Food processing, machinery, mining, tourism.

Mandan: you've crossed the Big Muddy into the high-rolling Old West Mandan's best known residence, the Fort Abraham Lincoln Home, lies within Fort Abraham Lincoln State Park. It is a reconstruction of the house that Lt.Col. George A. Custer and his wife Libbie, lived in from 1873 to 1876, when the cavalry complex alongside the Missouri was a center of trade.

The Badlands/Medora: described as " hell with the fires out," the badlands initially seem inhospitable and barren. Look closer and discover a terrain blanketed with wildflowers and prairie grasses in the spring and summer.

Theodore Roosevelt National Park: this 110-square-mile park honors the conservationist president, whose environmental awareness was reinforced in North Dakota.

Fort Union/Fort Buford; as one of the major trading posts for the American Fur Company, Fort Union was quite an upscale structure for the early-19th-century Plains. Building it was a calculated move on capitalist John Jacob Astor's part; he simply wanted to impress and thus gain favor with the local Indians.

New Town: the Three Affiliated Tribes Museum, four miles west of New Town on the Fort Berthed Reservation, displays art, crafts, and historical items of the Mundane Hydata, and Archer tribes.

Knife River Indian Villages: the Hydata culture that flourished for hundreds of years along these high Missouri River banks is memorialized at the Knife River Indian Villages national Historic Site. Walking tours pass the depressions left by 50 to 75 earth lodges, still revered by American Indians. In summer, turkey buzzards and golden eagles trace languid circles in the sky. Each fall the river's sandbars provide respite for migrating waterfowl.

Cross Ranch State Park; these grass prairies and river-bottom forests were discovered 200 years ago by Lewis and Clark and are now carefully preserved as Cross Ranch State Park, located along one of the last freeflowing undeveloped stretches of the Missouri River Camp on your own "island--spits of accreted land that jut out into the river---or hike on one of the trails in the Cross Ranch Nature Preserve.

These are some of North Dakota's Valleys, Lakes and Prairies: Fargo this is the Red River Valley America's heartland. Jamestown; the residents here like to list its major attractions as " good food, green prairies, cool water, clean air, shady parks, fair prices, and friendly people.

Devils Lake: were Sully's Hill National Game Preserve. Rugby; Pioneer Village and Museum.

International Peace Garden; were you can take nature tours boarding streams and lakes. A 120-foot-tall Peace Tower can be seen from either county.

Turtle Mountain: 200 years ago by explorers, these lake-dotted hills have long been home to the Chippewa Indians. Icelandic State Park; were the Gunloson Homestead and Nature Preserve. And Grand Forks: cream of wheat was born in this Red River center for agricultural trade.