Harold Schafer’s Medora

By CATHY LANGEMO

May 1 — Perhaps more important than the founding of Harold Schafer’s Gold Seal Company on this date in 1942 was his decision and dedication to revive the small southwestern North Dakota community of Medora.

The original town site in Billings County was founded in 1883 along the Northern Pacific Railroad just east of the small settlement named Little Missouri. The new town was named for Medora von Hoffman, daughter of a wealthy New York City banker and wife of a young French nobleman, the Marquis de Mores.

The Marquis’s lofty plans to build a meat packing empire in Medora quickly failed, however, and the family left the area in 1886, returning to France.

Medora is also noted for another colorful resident, Theodore Roosevelt, a young New York politician. His first visit was to hunt buffalo in September 1883, and he eventually owned two large ranches in the area.

The town died down somewhat after their departures, and it remained a simple cattle town until the late 1950s, when Harold Schafer and his Gold Seal Company began a major restoration and modernization of the western town.

Schafer developed many new attractions and businesses through the Theodore Roosevelt Medora Foundation. The “Old Four Eyes” production, begun in 1958, became the Medora Musical in 1965.

Erik Ramstad’s Immigration

By LANE SUNWALL

May 2 — This month in 1883, Erik and Oline Ramstad set out from Grafton in Dakota Territory to become the first settlers of present-day Minot. Three years later Erik Ramstad’s land sale to the railroad companies would set into motion the creation of the city of Minot. Ramstad would profit handsomely from these sales, and he became not only a bank and lumber company president, but one of Minot’s most celebrated forefathers.

Erik Ramstad did not begin life with expectations for such success on the Dakota frontier. He was born in Sigdal, Norway, to the family of a poor landless farmer. Erik’s father, Reier Pedersen, had the infamous reputation of being both the town brawler and drunkard. Due to his father’s poor reputation Erik forsook the family name of “Reier” for that of his employer Stener N. Ramstad. Seeking to further distance himself from his family connections, and for a chance at inexpensive land, Erik Ramstad immigrated first to a large Scandinavian community in southern Minnesota in 1880.

He was too late to claim the cheap land of a frontier community in Minnesota, so he spent two years earning money felling trees and wrestling men for money. The money Erik Ramstad earned forcing trees and men to the ground was not enough to start a farm in Minnesota.

It was however, enough to start one in Dakota Territory. Hearing of the inexpensive land on the Dakota frontier, Ramstad moved to Grafton Dakota Territory in 1882. At year’s end Erik Ramstad was unable to find any land that suited him. However, he did manage to find a wife, Ingeborg Oline Gullson, and by the beginning of 1883 they were wed.

That May of 1883 the Ramstads packed up their belongings into a single-covered wagon and made their way 200 miles west to the Mouse River Valley. After a month of traveling, Mr. Ramstad and his wife found a quiet wooded valley, and began to build their home.

Three years later, Ramstad agreed to sell sections of his homestead to James Hill’s railroad company that was building through the area. The railroad company founded the present-day city of Minot on the 40 acres of land that it originally had bought from Eric Ramstad for $1,000. In later years, Ramstad continued to sell and give away acres of land. Today, elementary schools, cemeteries, churches and Minot State University are all located on land originally donated by Eric Ramstad, a man who left Grafton this month in 1883 a poor Norwegian immigrant, and became one of Minot’s most celebrated forefathers.

Simons and His Prize

By TESSA SANDSTROM

May 3 — In May 1904, Joseph Pulitzer, creator of the coveted Pulitzer Prize, wrote: “Our Republic and its press will rise or fall together. An able, disinterested, public-spirited press, with trained intelligence to know the right and courage to do it, can preserve [the] public virtue…The power to mould the future of the Republic will be in the hands of the journalists of future generations.”

Pulitzer, a journalist who fought governmental corruption and was one of the first to promote teaching journalism at a university level, believed journalism was a noble field. Journalism, he said, “is one of unequaled importance for its influence upon the minds and morals of the people.” He strove to attract people to the profession and help them remain moral and responsible in their work. Thus, the Pulitzer Prize was born.

Pulitzer created the Prize to award those who met expectations of moral and responsible journalism, but the standards for the awards were high. If no paper met these standards, awards were simply not given that year. The Prize was given in 1938, however, and on this day in 1938, the Bismarck Tribune announced the good news.

The Bismarck Tribune was given the 1938 Pulitzer for “the most disinterested and meritorious public service rendered by any American newspaper during the year 1937.” This Public Service award was given specifically for the Tribune’s self-help column, “Self Help for the Dust Bowl,” written by Kenneth W. Simons and researched by Gordon MacGregor. Ultimately it was MacGregor who submitted the Tribune articles and editorials to the Pulitzer Prize Board.

Begun in 1933 by Tribune editor George D. Mann, “Self Help for the Dust Bowl” concentrated on aiding farmers in the Depression-ravaged Slope area. The column was based on the theory that, “if we are to expect help from others, we must show a willingness to help ourselves. The Tribune has resented the state of dependency into which circumstance has forced much of this state. It has looked for a way out. It believes it has found it in the practices of water conservation, range management, soil conservation and a better-balanced agriculture — an agriculture more suited to this region than that which settlers brought with them from more humid districts.”

Simons’ keystone was the need for irrigation development and the diversification of the state’s economy. Much of Simons’ research came from MacGregor, who “was tireless in [his] work. He roamed up and down the western part of the state probing, talking and writing … the punishment he inflicted on himself was immense … to him the vision was very real.” One vision became reality when the State Water Commission was created in 1937.

Both Simons and MacGregor were described as men of vision. Their concentration was aimed primarily at building a stronger North Dakota during the time of economic Depression. Yet, as North Dakota continually develops and diversifies its economy today, it is easy to see that this vision continued well past those years and the year when Simons helped prove his newspaper and staff were worthy of the coveted Pulitzer Prize.

Charges Dropped

By MERRILL PIEPKORN

May 4 — Did Dickinson businessman, George Berzel, get away with something when charges against him were dismissed? We’ll let you be the judge.

On this date in 1933, North Dakota was still a dry state. The end of the prohibition era was near, but the sale of beer and liquor was still illegal. North Dakota entered the union a dry state in 1889. Two years before, the Women’s Christian Temperance Union (the W.C.T.U.) and its temperance allies, including two Grand Forks newspapers, were successful in getting the territorial legislature to pass a local-option law, allowing any community to forbid the sale of liquor.

Most of the push for prohibition came from the eastern part of the state, the Red River Valley and its primarily Scandinavian population. Most people in the central and western parts of the state, the Germans from Russia in particular, opposed prohibition. They felt it was being forced down their throats by the Scandinavians. You see in Russia, the Germans were leaders, the upper class…more successful than their native Russian neighbors. In America, they were at the other end of the social and economic scale and they felt as though they were the underdogs. So, when prohibition took hold and became law, the Germans from Russia took it personally, and felt they didn’t need to abide by a law forced on them by the Scandinavians of the Valley.

That said…back to the story of George Berzel as it appeared in the May 4th, 1933, edition of the Grand Forks Herald newspaper. A Dickinson businessman, and German from Russia, Berzel was a merchant and truck line operator. He had been charged with illegally transporting beer into a dry state. Here’s what happened. At the time, Minnesota and Montana were NOT dry. Beer was legal in both states, and it was legal to transport beer from one state to another through North Dakota. Federal agents tracked two of Berzel’s beer-laden trucks from Moorhead, Minnesota, to Dickinson, where they found one of the trucks unloaded. The agents then confiscated both truckloads of beer and charged Berzel with illegally transporting the beer into a dry state.

Soon after the incident, in a hearing before U.S. Commissioner B.O. Thorkelson, the charges were dismissed for lack of evidence. Berzel admitted that one of the trucks had been unloaded, but not with the intention of leaving the beer in Dickinson. He claimed the beer needed to be unloaded in order to make repairs on the truck. In his testimony, Berzel claimed that as soon the repairs could be made, the beer would be loaded back on the truck and it would continue its journey to Wibaux, Montana.

So…were both truckloads of beer really headed for Montana, or are Germans from Russia really good story tellers?

Bomb Balloon

By MERRY HELM

May 5 — It was on this date in 1945 that a Japanese bomb balloon claimed the lives of six people in Oregon. They were the only casualties of World War II in the continental United States. Two of them were the children of Grand Forks railroad engineer, Frank Patzke — 13-year-old Joan and 14-year-old Dick.

Reverend Archie Mitchell and his young expectant wife, Elsie, were hosting an outing for five adolescents who attended Sunday school at the Bly Christian and Missionary Alliance Church. The plan was to have a picnic and do some fishing in the mountains. According to reports, Reverend Mitchell found the main road to the Fremont National Forest blocked by equipment, so he pulled off the road at a different spot where they could fish in a creek.

Mrs. Mitchell and the children got out while Archie was either parking the car or unloading food or both. He heard Joan Patzke say, “Look what I found!” and saw a gigantic balloon she’d discovered caught on some tree branches.

Just a few weeks earlier, one of the other kids, 13-year-old Jay Gifford, had found a weather balloon. He had returned it to the weather station in Klamath Falls, where he was praised for his action. Now, here was another balloon. Someone tugged on one of the balloon’s ropes and an on-board bombs detonated. The explosion instantly killed all but the Reverend.

During the previous six months, thousands of hydrogen-filled bomb balloons had been launched from a seaside beach in Honshu, Japan. Each was 33 feet across and carried 5 bombs – four that would cause fires and one that was meant to kill. Traveling in the jet stream, the balloons crossed the Pacific in approximately three days.

The experiment was short-lived, because censorship in the U.S. kept the enemy from learning whether these weapons were doing their job. It was also expensive. Originally, the balloons were made of rubberized silk. Then, someone thought of using a special waterproof paper traditionally used for making stencils for textile design. The technique for manufacturing the paper was long and laborious; after the paper was made, it was waterproofed by soaking in mulberry juice that had been aged many months.

Given the fact that the government had ordered 10,000 balloons, one can only imagine how laborious it was to construct them. Individual sheets of this paper were only about the size of a piece of gift wrap; not only did they have to be spliced together, they had to be laminated three to four layers deep. The paste that was used was derived from a tuber called “devil’s-tongue” and was often eaten by hungry workers on the sly.

Final construction required auditorium-size work spaces, but a bigger problem arose when B-29 bombers took out two of Japan’s three hydrogen plants. Without hydrogen, the balloons were grounded.

Without any evidence of their effectiveness, General Kusaba canceled the balloon operation in April 1945. What he didn’t know was that the month before, one of the last paper balloons had come down near the Manhattan Project’s production site at Hanford, Washington. It landed on a power line and shut down the reactor that was producing plutonium for the Nagasaki bomb.

“Dakota Datebook” is a radio series from Prairie Public in partnership with the State Historical Society of North Dakota and with funding from Humanities North Dakota.