Despite our state being only 136 years old, we all know there is plenty of history that happened during those years. Military history, the building of the railroads, cities springing up on the steel rail, massive cattle ranches and bonanza farms are all part of it.
There’s also the lesser-known history that most of us may not know about. Locally, there are stories of course, but on a statewide basis, things have happened here that teeter between quirky and just plain weird.
Some of us know that Walhalla, in Pembina County, has a much longer history than North Dakota, and even Dakota Territory. It’s all tied into how the Canadian border was surveyed and the area settled.
Walhalla, the “Valley of the Gods,” used to be called St. Joseph and nearly all the residents were Metis, a mix of French and Chippewa people, a federally recognized First Nations tribe in Canada, but not in the United States.
There were also numerous missionaries working in the area before Dakota Territorial days. One of them was Father Bellecourt, from which the community of Belcourt is named.
As was common throughout history, the missionaries attempted to convert the Chippewa and Metis to Christianity, and they did a pretty good job with it until the Indians had about enough.
So sometime in 1852 an historical event occurred that became known as the Martyrs of St. Joe. About a dozen people were killed in a massacre and more were killed two years later. Thus, there are at least a dozen people buried in this historical location and each person has a different headstone.
One of them states, “Mrs. Cornelius Spencer, killed by Indians Aug. 39, 1854 at Walhalla (St. Joseph), where she and her husband were laboring as missionaries.” The graves are in the Walhalla Cemetery on Division Street in the Pembina County community.
The name St. Joseph was changed to Walhalla in 1871, primarily to avoid confusion with other communities in the region also named St. Joseph.
Here’s another historical event they don’t teach us about in middle school or high school history.
There’s an obscure place on the northwest side of Hebron that became known as Fort Sauerkraut. It’s on a hilltop that overlooks the local cemetery.
Local settlers in the 1880s, mostly German immigrants, feared hostile Indians had escaped a nearby reservation, the closest being Fort Berthold, and planned to attack the town of Hebron.
In a state of panic, the settlers shipped most of the women and children to Bismarck and built a fort out of sod and railroad ties. The Indian attack never happened, but the quirky Fort Sauerkraut still stands.
Finally, this is an event in our recent history that I’m guessing several people will remember, although most of us who grew up in the ‘60s and beyond are not aware of this.
The community of Michigan, in Nelson County, has a monument near a spot where 34 people died in what is known as North Dakota’s worst rail disaster.
It happened on Aug. 9, 1945, the same day the second nuclear bomb was dropped on Nagasaki in Japan. One train was crushed by another just west of town. A total of 20 service members were killed who were all returning home from World War II. Separately 12 civilians and two children died in the accident.
The front of the granite monument lists the names of everyone that includes the military rank of the Army and Navy personnel killed in the wreck. There’s also a photograph of the disaster on the front, and in the rear, the monument explains the details of the crash.
Two Great Northern Empire Builder trains left St. Paul 20 minutes apart. When the first train left Grand Forks, it was 30 minutes ahead of the second, but had some mechanical issues. West of Michigan, the train stopped to inspect possible brake damage and the second train plowed into the first killing 34 of the 937 people aboard both trains.
It remains as the worst loss of life of any train accident in the history of North Dakota.
