There’s a bill in the Legislature that’s already been approved by the House, that would eliminate Daylight Savings Time in North Dakota. Apparently, House Bill 1259 was approved on a 55-37 vote.

This subject seems to come up again and again and it always gets voted down. Heck, I remember this was a “thing” when I was in high school in the 1970s and it didn’t go anywhere. The only thing I remember about it back then was the time zone was moved further west.

If you recall, Mandan and points west were in the Mountain Time Zone and if my memory is correct, it was changed because when bars closed down in Bismarck, people could go to Mandan for an additional hour of drinking. Apparently, the Legislature didn’t like that.

There’s always been a lively debate about this. There’s no denying that. I remember my parents talking about this back in the ‘70s. I don’t recall the exact conversation but they didn’t want to support Daylight Savings Time because all it was good for was to allow people to play golf for another hour.

Golf, farming, summer camp, baseball tournaments, backyard get togethers and children playing together have all benefited from that extra hour of daylight.

In reality, you don’t get an extra hour. Time is always the same. It’s just shifted from the beginning of the day to the end of the day.
If you are a morning person, you might like this. But then again, I know a number of people across the state of North Dakota who are morning people primarily because of how peaceful it is at sunrise. If we stay on standard time, they would have to get up much earlier to enjoy the same sunrise.

Pardon the cliche, but at the end of the day, think about this. Because we are on the western edge of the Central Time Zone and are situated between 46 and 49 Degrees North Latitude, we enjoy some of the latest daylight in the United States, except for Alaska.

Several years ago when I was at the Minot Daily News, I wrote an article about numerous communities in northwestern North Dakota and when the sun went down in each respective place. And, it should be no surprise that Fortuna and Crosby have the latest daylight. The focus of that article was that at least a small portion of North Dakota is only 1 hour and 2 minutes from the midnight sun on June 21.

If you’ve lived elsewhere in the United States, you would appreciate the fact that you have daylight until 10:30 at night. Stationed at Fort Riley, Kan., in 2003, the sun dropped between 8:30 and 9 in early summer. Stationed at MacDill Air Force Base in 2006-07, the sun was going down in Tampa by 7:30 p.m., around the solstice.
So in my opinion, it’s a blessing to be able to enjoy that late sunshine in North Dakota. In addition to that, it seems to get dark way too fast around the winter solstice. Where I live in Ward County, we drop to 8 hours, 3 minutes of daylight on Dec. 21. Thus, the sun goes down just before 5 p.m. So one thing we can look forward to in January and February to help our mood is we start to see more daylight.

Now for those in the southwest where the time zone boundary was moved years ago, they would most likely be the best people to survey about this. The rest of us will probably debate this until the end of time. But people from the Mandan area, I’m sure would have lively opinions about why or why not this is a good idea.
I will say this about standard time. When I worked in Hazen in the early ‘80s, (Mountain Time) and my National Guard unit was in Edgeley (Central Time), it was often confusing so the time on my watch was Mountain Time and the clock in my car was on Central Time. So for nearly two years, I had to be aware of things in two time zones at the same time.

And I still remember having this debate with Hazen and Beulah area farmers. Growing up in Hazelton, I supported Daylight Savings Time simply because we could play baseball later. And most of the Mercer County farmers were against it. To this day, I recall one farmer becoming angry, with me, pounding his fist on the table and saying, “Mountain Time is the only time.”