Good Grief, Another Blizzard!

Here it is, the last day of March, 2014, and snow is falling sideways. All the schools in the area are shut down. It seems like we had a similar storm last year about this time. Green grass will sure look good again. The Missouri is open and flowing. Whenever we cross the bridge we look down and see fishing boats. Can't keep good men down, except maybe today.

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A couple interesting websites showed up recently which I think are legit. Just in case people have some money forgotten here and there, you can check it out. Mary opened them up and saw a few people we know. - MissingMoney.com and Unclaimed.org.

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A couple of weeks ago we traveled south past Mary's birthplace and visited Duaine Voigt who lives on the other side of the Cannonball River. He lives on The Anchor Ranch, which is the one established by the subject of my recent book, William Wade. It so happens Duaine has a story which I'm interested in, too. In 1951, his family was displaced by construction of the Garrison Dam and its promise of flooding over their property at Elbowoods. They bought this ranch, and to get their herd of cattle to the new place, they drove them overland for 10 1/2 days. I wanted that story, and a good one it is. He sat for several hours giving us all the details. It was an interesting period in state history what with oil being discovered at Tioga that year also.

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It doesn't matter which era you live in, people had their troubles. The Mandan paper carried this bit printed 125 years ago - “It is time something was done to the tramp horses and cattle which rove about the streets of Mandan. It is an everyday occurrence to see a lot of these animals feeding out of a farmer's wagon which is standing in front of some store. Only a day or two ago, a farmer bought two bushels of seed corn and left it in his wagon long enough to get the mail. When he returned, the sack had been torn open, and the corn was scattered in the street.”

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Here's an article that has been published recently in a couple weekly newspapers. (This state is full of good stories.)

Looking Back …

Laying Rails

by Lynn Bueling

The early development of North Dakota can hardly be separated from the building of railroads. Without them, it would have taken a long time to move past the open range. Issues of my hometown newspaper published in 1885-86 indicate the significance of the railroad in the early days of almost anybody's town. “ The timbers for the new bridge across the Maple River came last week. - Barbed wire is going off so fast that Karl Rudd ordered his second carload this week. - P. Goodman shipped a carload of fine hogs to Fargo yesterday, the first ever from Sheldon. - We notice the McCormick machines still keep coming in by freight and express. - Farmers are beginning to haul home their binding twine. - Two more carloads of lumber for the North Star Elevator arrived here yesterday. - Twenty cars of freight passed west yesterday. - Train loads of emigrants and emigrant movables continue to pass west. - K. Rudd received a carload of splendid looking brick last Thursday.”

The crews building the railroads were a tough lot. An occurrence in 1886, the “Battle of Fort Hankinson,” catches the eye. Rails laid by different companies needed to cross each other occasionally, and protocol dictated that the first construction crew to reach a designated spot could keep going. The crew that crossed later was tasked with building the crossing and, thereafter, maintaining it. In some cases, crews raced each other to be first, not in sportsmanlike fashion.

Near Hankinson, the Soo and Great Northern workmen worked in fairly close proximity as they neared the spot of crossing. Within earshot, they threw slurs and derogatory comments at each other and tempers grew. The Soo workers were a bit ahead, so some of the Great Northern crew resorted to blocking their way with a stout barricade. Others rushed back to Breckenridge for reinforcements and firearms, only to discover upon returning that the Soo Line crew had worked all night and reached the crossing and beyond. The Great Northern crew had to admit to defeat, and tempers cooled.

During a trip to Winnipeg a few years ago, we learned about the “Battle of Fort Whyte,” in 1888. William Whyte managed the Canadian Pacific railway in those parts, and when the Northern Pacific & Manitoba railway set about to cross the CP heading north, Whyte protested and ordered his crews to park a locomotive in their path. Fistfights and verbal threats ensued, and it took the Supreme Court of Canada to settle it in favor of the NP.

The Enderlin Diamond Jubilee book of 1966 teases the reader with a brief statement about another battle. After mentioning a bit about the Hankinson affair, it went on to say that Soo Line old-timers spoke of “the even more violent conflict at Minot.” More information about that episode has proven elusive to this point, however.

Before statehood, Dakota Territory saw two transcontinental railroads built within its borders, the Northern Pacific and the Great Northern. The NP passed through Fargo, stopped at Bismarck because of financial bankruptcy, and finally passed through the Badlands in 1881. The financier Jay Cooke enabled its construction to begin in the early years by securing a grant of 40,000,000 acres of undeveloped land from the federal government. Many, though, thought his railroad building was ill-advised because he kept barging ahead into territory without a population-base that could return immediate profits.

The Great Northern accomplished its goal of building a line across the country a few years later, but with a different manner of financing. James J. Hill, its president, obtained private funding for his project. Historical sources indicate his philosophy differed from the NP. Hill observed the NP's progress straightway across country without establishing much in the way of income from their efforts. Hill, as his mainline stretched ever westward, promoted settlement and built feeder lines, ten between Grand Forks and Williston, to the north and south to provide freight business.

An interesting story developed when the GN rails reached the soon-to-be city of Minot in 1886. There, track layers had reached the edge of the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation where federal officials informed him he could not cross. Not to be stymied, this aggressive, self-confident man traveled to Washington, DC and secured congressional legislation that permitted his company to proceed.

During his absence things were happening in Minot. According to Robinson's History of North Dakota, a huge camp of 8,000 men and 3,300 teams gathered that winter waiting to work as graders with another 650 men and 225 teams for laying track and building bridges. As was typical of any of the Hell on Wheels towns that developed behind rail heads, a rowdy, undisciplined group of people gathered to establish gambling, saloons, and women known as “soiled doves.” These towns built primarily of canvas could easily tear down and reconstruct themselves as the rail head crept forward.

With the huge crew at work surveying, grading, building trestles, laying ties, then rails, Hill's men reached Great Falls the next October by averaging three and a quarter miles per day. With his no-nonsense style of leadership and record of accomplishments, it is little wonder that Hill became known as the Empire Builder.

And That's How It Is

I  know several people who have expressed dismay at my lack of regularity with this blog.  Other things have developed that take my attention and concentration and there's not enough left to write worthwhile blog material.  I want to keep this site active and therefore plan to post once a month on the first of the month or as near to it as I can.  Apologies to those who have become regular readers.  Following I am posting one of the recent articles published in the newspapers.
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LOOKING BACK ...

A Horse Story

by Lynn Bueling

Most people like a good horse story. Through the years, countless numbers of them have run through the pages of our books: Black Beauty, Smoky the Cow Horse, the Black Stallion, lately War Horse, plus many others. For the most part, the stories follow a pattern of good times followed by bad, then ending happily with the horse living out his days in friendly surroundings.

The first book series that gripped my attention as a young lad was the trilogy by Mary O'Hara - My Friend Flicka, Thunderhead, and The Green Grass of Wyoming. Flicka inherited a strain of mustang blood that made her hard to tame, ie until a boy adopts her, then the above mentioned pattern develops. In Thunderhead, Flicka gives birth to the horse Thunderhead, the inheritor of his mother's wild mustang blood. The boy's father wants to geld him. It's there the tension begins. The boy comes of age as a rancher in The Green Grass of Wyoming. The books can hold the interest of any age group and are on my list to read again sometime.

For the most part, the horse culture was so ingrained in our society that they were taken for granted, used up, and cast away. A horse needed to have accomplished something above the ordinary to be noticed. In 1885, newspapers quoted the following lines from an obituary: “At the conclusion of the services at the church, the procession will at once proceed to the grave where all that remains of the deceased will be laid to rest. The hearse will be drawn by Fastboy, the well-known five-year-old Hambletonian who has but recently reduced his record to 2:32.”

For the past few years I've been a fan of a horse named Tipperary. His history came to light when reading about the remount service in World War I. On the battlefields of Europe, horses, in huge numbers, became targeted or suffered indiscriminate deaths from artillery shells, gas, and disease. The availability of replacements on the European continent had disappeared, and buyers looked elsewhere to buy remounts. Because of our military's dependance on horses and mules, the government established the U. S. Remount Service in 1908 whose task was to maintain a dependable supply. They even formed a breeding program to fill quotas.

Shift the scene to Camp Crook, South Dakota, 1915. The town, located in the extreme northwest corner of the state, was relatively close to Fort Keogh, the army's largest remount station, near Miles City, Montana. French buyers came down to Camp Crook to attend a horse sale. They inspected each horse individually to determine its suitability as a war horse. Tipperary did not make the cut because he demonstrated an outlaw nature.

Since his owners realized he would never make a saddle horse, they put him into competition with the rugged cowboys who thought they could ride any bronc. The reputation of the horse started growing; he bucked off all of his would-be riders. One of the first men to mount up and get thrown gave name to the horse. As he rose from the dirt and dusted himself off, he started singing words from a song of the time, “It's a long, long way to Tipperary.”

Rodeo rules differed greatly from those in today's Pro Rodeo Cowboys rulebook, if, indeed,they even existed. A horse was held in place in the middle of an arena and released when the rider got in the saddle. He could ride for as long as he stayed in the saddle, if he kept his feet in the stirrups. One man early in Tipperary's career did ride him, but people seem to discount the ride. Why? The horse limped into the arena because of a cut and sore foot. Prize money probably motivated the owners to permit the ride even with the injury. The SPCA existed at this time, but who checked on such things out here?

The years started passing by, and the number of Tipperary's victories mounted. Not until 1920 did anyone score a qualified ride on him. The rider, Yakima Canutt, rode him successfully in a muddy arena where the horse never gained firm footing. The following year, the same man rode him to the finish, but spectators on one side of the arena booed and protested that Canutt had lost a stirrup on the offside where judges couldn't see. It should have disqualified him, but he received the prize money. Canutt went on to the movie business in Hollywood and often stunted for John Wayne, including the famous runaway scene in the movie “Stagecoach.”

One other man scored a successful ride in 1926 when the horse was 21 years old. With that defeat his owner finally released him into the prairie to live out his days. The final tally of Tipperary's victories is somewhat elusive because of poor record keeping, but best guess estimates place it at about 91. Unfortunately, this story does not end happily. In 1932, a blizzard caught Tipperary in the open. They found him in the spring, his bones picked clean by coyotes.