***
The sun is shining today. At first I didn't recognize what it was. At least we aren't drowning in the heavy rainfalls in the east. You can just imagine all the leaky roofs that are showing up.
***
The first phase of re-opening the heritage center started on Monday. I have been volunteering there in the archaelogy lab but was asked to help out a bit at the front door. So yesterday morning that is where I found myself. Only two of the galleries opened, but they are great. The governor called the museum "world class," and he may just be right.
***
We have purchased our tickets to Sacramento and have a room reservation in the WWA convention motel. After spending a few days there, we proceed on to San Francisco for a couple days of visiting with my cousin and her husband. She asked what we would like to see, and we responded, "Anything but Alcatraz." The books keep coming in to review from the Western Writers, so whenever I think there's nothing to do, there stands a stack of books. The Bismarck Tribune sends a book once in awhile, too. Next year we go to Lubbock, TX for the convention.
***
Yesterday, between museum goers, I read a bit of research for my planned "big story." Some of the things those people experienced were far different from the way people live today. It's too bad more of the details of those lives haven't been preserved. I found a quotation from the well-known writer and historian Dee Brown which applies: "Sometimes there isn't enough material. There's a story there and you can't fill it in with facts, so you let your imagination run wild." What else can you do?
***
The Enderlin Independent continues to print my essays on a weekly basis. While attending a funeral in Sheldon on Saturday, I had several people tell me they're enjoying them. So, I'll offer up one of them here:
Looking
Back...
Blizzards
by
Lynn Bueling
Blizzards
have been a bane on existence since people first came to the northern
plains. Native Americans developed the teepee design to protect them
from the elements. Howling winter winds swirled around their little
conical dwellings while they waited for mild weather.
Imagine,
though, sitting out a three-day blizzard in a covered wagon designed
to haul freight. That happened in December, 1867 when a train of
forty-five freight wagons pulled by oxen stalled near Lisbon. With
no windbreak on the treeless plain, fierce gales blew freely. Snow
drifted over and around the wagons and buried the teams.
The
train got caught in the open as they headed back to Fort Abercrombie
after delivering goods to Fort Ransom. The outfit's owner was
himself an experienced teamster, but he was not traveling with them
that day. Instead, another man served as wagon boss. The question
has been asked why he directed the train to travel around the big
bend of the Sheyenne River instead of the shorter direct route. We
will never know.
And
why, after stopping, didn't he set the oxen free to drift with their
backs to the storm? Twenty-one oxen died beneath the snow. When
Stevenson found his train, he came upon a very hungry group of men.
Teamsters were a rugged, self-sufficient lot, but they were unable to
cook in the howling wind. How they kept from freezing to death is
anybody's guess.
Move
forward to the winter of 1886-87 for an event that made a significant
mark in the history of the plains. First, the lead-up. This item
appeared in the Sheldon Enterprise
dated March 31, 1885: “Thousands of head of cattle have been
bought in Northwestern Iowa in the last few weeks to be taken to the
large ranches in Dakota and Montana for fattening purposes.”
In the
mind's eye, you can watch many trains of loaded cattle cars heading
west on the Northern Pacific railroad. Blend them with other herds
driven overland from the south (think Lonesome Dove), and hundreds of
thousands of them ended up grazing the rich native grasses of the
open range. Short-sightedness among the ranchmen expecting easy
profit proved to be their undoing. Cattle had been let to graze and
fatten the year long in the previous mild winters with no
supplementary feed or shelter. Hay had not been cut!
Snow
began falling, often and deep,with the thermometer registering “very
cold.” Severe weather never seemed to end, and starving, frozen
cattle began to die, by the thousands. Someone asked Charley
Russell, the famous western artist, just how bad was it. He
responded, not with words, but with a painting of a hunch-backed,
emaciated steer being circled by wolves. The picture became known as
“Waiting for a Chinook,” or sometimes “Last of the 5000.”
Ranchers living on the range called it “The Great Die-Up.”
Estimates vary as to the numbers of cattle lost, but they reached
into the hundreds of thousands.
Teddy
Roosevelt's Badlands cattle operation disappeared with the winter's
snow and cold. He went home to the east and started his political
career. Most of the money invested in the cattle had come from
eastern and foreign capital. Those investors took their losses, then
looked elsewhere to invest. Ranchers who survived changed their
methods of operation to anticipate hard times.
The
blizzard in the year 1920 gained some notoriety when a young girl,
Hazel Miner, and her younger brother and sister were riding home in a
sleigh from school and turned over in a ravine. Her heroic efforts
saved the lives of her siblings, but she died, along with 33 other
North Dakotans in a variety of situations.
Hard to
believe, but it's already been forty-seven years since the three day
March blizzard of 1966 came roaring through our state. Probably the
worst of the modern day storms, it claimed six people along with
seventy-five thousand cattle, 54 thousand sheep, plus a miscellany of
other animals. After the storm passed, drifts stood as tall as the
peaks of barn roofs. Recently, the weathermen in a Fargo television
station studied records of storms and concluded that of this
century's blizzards, the one of 1966 was the worst. A phrase used by
them can be applied to any of these storms: “Three days of crazy
wind.”
