Nearly 200 years ago, Lewis and Clark followed the Missouri River across North Dakota, where they discovered their most formidable foe—the grizzly bear. Today, the grizzly is extinct in North Dakota, though it is the state animal of Montana, North Dakota’s western neighbor.
After the Civil War, settlers flocked to the frontier on the far side of the Missouri River. The Great Plains were then the home of Native Americans, or American Indians. The most powerful tribe in the northern Great Plains was the Sioux, who called themselves Dakota or Lakota, meaning “friends” or “allies.”
The Sioux and other tribes were conquered by white man and confined on reservations. A portion of their home was designated Dakota Territory, which was divided into North and South Dakota in 1889.
Today, fewer people live in North Dakota, with its hot summers and bitterly cold winters, than almost any other state. The vast open spaces and distant horizons are breathtaking, even frightening to some people from big cities.
Put a brick under the bottom left corner of a sheet of plywood, and you will have some idea of what North Dakota is like. It is not perfectly flat, however.
The state’s most populated region is the fertile Red River Valley, the bed of an Ice Age lake that runs along the North Dakota-Minnesota border. To the west is the Drift Prairie Region, a glaciated region of rolling hills and rich soils. Grasses are tall or short, depending on the availability of moisture.
Glaciers never covered North Dakota’s southwest corner, a more rugged land with buttes, bluffs, breaks, and badlands. Relatively dry, this is short grass country. Theodore Roosevelt National Park commemorates our most adventurous president’s ranch in the Little Missouri Badlands.
The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism - Paperback
