Posts Tagged With: North Dakota Heritage and Cultural Center

Bismarck, ND August 27

10 AM Sunday service at the Cathedral of the Holy Spirit was a surprise. A full house and about 40% of the attendees were children and teenagers. No special service, evidently just the usual crowd. We are more used to seeing the gray hairs vastly predominant.

Our next surprise was breakfast at The Little Cottage Cafe. The line was out the door but we were assured the wait was worth it and the line would move quickly. All of the tables were for 2s and 4s. While waiting, we chatted a bit with two couples, one our age and one in their 20s and sat next to each other and the conversation continued. Major good advice: Order the caramel roll as an appetizer. We did and it was fantastic; sweet with extra caramel, warm, soft and fluffy, not heavy like some others are. The entire breakfast was tasty and inexpensive. Put it on your list next time you are in Bismarck.

Another bit of advice was to visit the North Dakota Heritage Center and State Museum. We had it on our secondary list in case we finished the State Capitol tour early. We decided to move it up and visit the Capitol second. Wise choice, as we got to the museum, we were informed the Capitol tours were not being held this weekend due to repairs-even though the Capitol web site had not mentioned that.

The Heritage Center and Museum was either new or recently renovated. The displays were well done with a nice mix of new technology and old style but new display boards. The information presented covered an extensive catalog of topics; obviously not comprehensively but reasonably thorough. The information on Native Americans was substantial.

We re-learned ND’s legacy of fighting the early domination of the state by railroads and wheat magnates out of Minneapolis. ND’s geologic history lead to several exhibits about fossils, bison, and dinosaurs. Agriculture, coal, and fracking were several hot topics also.

North Dakota is an immigrant state and the pattern of immigrants from European countries forming their own enclaves and keeping their heritage alive was discussed, although I did not observe any displays of Indian boarding schools and their negative impact on Indian cultures.

Admission to the museum is free so people are able to come back often. I find it more and more difficult to retain much of the new information I pick up at museums but I keep trying.

An afternoon cruise on the Missouri River was next on our agenda. The Missouri has been frequently dammed in ND, SD, and MT, creating water recreation opportunities. Pontoon boats were the most numerous type of vessels we observed. Our excursion boat could probably seat 150 people and was about one-half full.

This section of the Missouri River is part of the Northern Plains National Heritage Area. National Heritage Areas are created by Congress and coordinated with the National Park Service. They are not an official unit of NPS. My personal interpretation is that these are local efforts to market their communities tying into the cachet of the National Park Service. The official verbiage is: Through public-private partnerships, NHA entities support historic preservation, natural resource conservation, recreation, heritage tourism,and educational projects.

I think the people on the boat were just having a relaxing boat ride. However, there was a recorded narration on the cruise lasting about 20 minutes. If you listened to it, you heard most of the presentation expressing the Native American perspective of the dams on the Missouri. Creation of the dams led to to the destruction of the Indian villages that had been up and down the Missouri River. One statement was: “ my birthplace is 20 feet below the surface of the river”.

As we left the boat, we came across a large mural. It was a project just completed that had as its goal to bring together partners within the National Heritage Area to share stories about how and why the Missouri River was and continues to be meaningful. Some of the themes included the role of immigrant settler women in agriculture, the state flower (Prairie Rose) and state bird (the Meadowlark), role of cottonwood trees, the river as a source of life, and the three tribes of the area (Mandan, Arikara, and Hidatsa).

On a related note, some of the words from languages used in the area for river are: Fluss (German), Elv (Norwegian), Mnishoshe (Lakota), Joki (Finnish), and Maatahe (Mandan).

Before dinner, we finished up the day by driving to an overlook on the bluffs overlooking the river for a beautiful view of the Missouri. Dinner was at The Lodge, a nearby restaurant recommended by our brunch companions.

Ed and Chris Bismarck Aug.27