Heritage Renewal

The Center for Heritage Renewal will be exhibiting at the Grass-N-Beef Research Review, Central Grasslands Research Extension Center, Streeter, on January 20. The center recently acquired three banner stands to use as exhibit panels. One will bear general information about the center, and the other two will contain historic photographs of rural life in the Missouri Coteau during the 1930s and 1940s. The photos all are drawn from county extension agent reports held by NDSU Archives. One set of photos is organized under the theme, "Hard Times in the Middle Landscape." It depicts such events and developments as dust storms, grasshopper poisoning campaigns, and the organization of New Deal farm programs. A second set of photographs is arranged under the heading, "Keeping the Faith in the Coteau." These depict residents of the region adapting and carrying on a sense of community despite the hard times. Scenes include 4H and homemaker achievement days, pageantry, picnics, and cooperative cattle dipping.

Due to the unreliability of campus mail delivery at NDSU (the university having resorted to some sort of private provider that habitually loses mail), I caution anyone off campus from attempting to mail anything to me or to the Center for Heritage Renewal on campus. Instead, mail to my home address:

Tom Isern
3803 Willow Road
West Fargo ND 58078

I'm sorry for any inconvenience.

Check out Heritage Trails in Facebook for a day-by-day illustrated account of the Dakota Memories Heritage Tour of German-Russian country.

Bear with us, please, if there is some funny business in this weblog space for a little while. The weblog is published from Blogger, and the web host is Network Solutions. Those two entities don't like one another. We just about have the interface figured out, though.

Congratulations to the Germans from Russia Heritage Collection on the success of its Dakota Memories Heritage Tour this past weekend. Photos from the expedition already are appearing at the GRHC Facebook page. The center also will be posting photos at Webshots and Heritage Trails.

Spread the word about Heritage Trails, OK? It's the Facebook group organized by the center as a platform for grassroots heritage tourism on the northern plains. Here's a poster about it.

Last Saturday morning I met in Wishek with a group of citizens interested in preserving and restoring the old city hall, a Mission Revival building constructed in 1917. Here are some photographs of the old hall. This building is an unappreciated heritage resource that can be redeveloped to great advantage for the community. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2005.