EXPLORING FARGO, NORTH DAKOTA

 For the next three days, we explored Fargo. And learned a lot about this state.

you can predict the gruesome
topic of this movie!

At the Visitor Center we saw the chipper that featured in the 1996 movie Fargo, described as "beautifully shot and wickedly funny." For some strange reason, this macabre oddity became Fargo's claim to fame. As bizarre as it is, the Visitor Center sells posters and memorabilia relating to the murder mystery movie. A souvenier of a small chipper magnet, a shot glass with blood in it or a recipe for making blood didn't sound very enticing but we did have a photo taken at the "famous" chipper just because we were here. The irony is that only one scene of the movie was actually filmed in Fargo because for some odd reason there was less snow in Fargo that year so the movie was actually filmed in Minnesota. 

I chatted with one of the agents at the Visitor Center about life in Fargo and although he was born and raised here, he is actively looking for an opportunity to move somewhere else. Winters here are long and harsh, with negative 45°F temperatures and snow that does not melt until spring. The summers are short and hot. Temperature swings can be quite severe too. Both of North Dakota's recorded weather extremes occured in 1936: minus 60°F in February and 121°F in July. 

We inquired about the closest car wash for the Jeep after the long trip out. We discovered that almost every gas station also has a car wash. The penny dropped: the only way to keep a car clean and wash off the de-icing road salt used on the roads during the long brutal winters is in a car wash. 

Fargo Fast Facts that I learned at the Visitor Center include:

• The Fargo Marathon is the #1 favorite Boston Marathon qualifying race
• Sprawling across 48 square miles, Fargo itself is equal to the size of Boston
• Fargo is home to 25,000+ college students  - which makes Fargo's population median age 30.3 years

Here are several fun facts about North Dakota I learned:

• North Dakota is the Happiest State in the US
• North Dakota is the Peace Garden State
• They hold the Guinness World Record for the most snow angels made simultaneously in one place - in February 2007, 8,962 people made snow angels at the state Capitol grounds in Bismarck
• North Dakota is the #1 producer of honey, wheat, barley, and sunflowers 
• North Dakota produces enough sugar beets to sweeten 27 billion gallons of Kool-Aid
• North Dakota has three times more cattle than people
• North Dakota's 2.4% Unemployment Rate is the lowest in the US
• North Dakota is the second highest oil-producing state, second only to Texas
• When Dakota Territory was created in 1861, it was named for the Dakota Indian tribe.  Dakota is the Sioux word for "friends" or "allies"
• About 90,000 bison live in North Dakota
• North Dakota is home to the largest state-owned sheep research center in the US
• The Lewis and Clark expedition encountered their first grizzly bears in North Dakota
• The town of Rugby is the geographic center of North America
• Less than 1% of North Dakota is forest, the smallest amount of any state
• Comedian Red Skelton once quipped that North Dakota is "the only place I've been where I didn't have to look up to see the sky."

And I agree!  There are no mountains or hills.  The prairie plains here are so flat that the sky is visible meeting the horizon straight ahead in every direction!  

There are over 40 famous people from North Dakota, from all walks of life and professions. Names that I recognized include actress Angie Dickinson; author Louis L'Amour; singer Peggy Lee; entertainer Bobby Vee; and the Lawrence Welk band leader.

any up and coming town
has dancing girls! 

More enlightened about North Dakota, we continued on to tour Bonanzaville, an outdoor museum with buildings and artifacts spanning several decades of Fargo and North Dakota history. Once it was determined that a railway would cross this point, pioneers began to file land claims in this area and came to settle and make their fortunes. A lot of very hardy and hardworking Europeans settled here to farm the vast plains. The conditions must have been extremely difficult and it's a testament to the settlers' perseverance that towns grew and farms became established in this harsh environment. We browsed through original homes with period furnishings, displays of tractors and farm equipment, a grain silo, a locomotive and train depot, automobiles, school, church, court room, and all that relates to a town as it develops and grows to support the pioneer families that made their way here.  

Fargo's first house built by homesteader Henry Moore in 1871

auto museum

Cass County Courthouse

a timeline of tractor equipment

Transgrud house and a sewing machine

South Pleasant Church

At the Hjemkomst Center (pronounced yem-komst) across the Red River in Moorehead, Minnesota, we learned about the Norwegian immigration into this area in the late 1800s. They settled in the eastern and northern parts of the state, coming to the fertile farmland in North Dakota because of the lack of farmland in Norway.  The 1880 census recorded almost 9,000 Norwegians.  By 1900 there were almost 74,000.  A strong Norwegian presence and heritage remains. Today, 30.8% of the population in North Dakota is of Norwegian ancestry. 

The Hjemkomst Center houses two Norwegian heritage replicas. One is a full-size replica of a 9th century Norwegian Viking ship, the Hjemkomst ('homecoming' in Norwegian). It was built near Fargo by Norwegian descendant Bob Asp.  He died before his dream of sailing the Viking ship to Norway could be realized. His family, however, completed the journey in 1982, sailing Asp's ship through the Great Lakes, down the Erie Canal, and across the Atlantic to Norway where they were greeted with much fanfare.  

The Hjemkomst now represents the seafaring heritage of Scandinavian Americans, most of whom live in Minnesota (101,625) and North Dakota (12,246). 

For a more detailed description and pictures, this link to the Historical and Cultural Society is a good resource: The Hjemkomst

Outside stands another Norwegian icon, the Hopperstad Stave Church, a full-scale replica of the Hopperstad Stave Church in Vik, Norway.  Stave churches were built during the 12th and 13th centuries.  The name comes from the type of support pillars, staves, used in their construction. The English word 'staff ' comes from that word.

unique architecture of stave churches

the typical doorway you step up and over to enter

stave pillars used in construction

This link is a good resource for the story behind the idea and construction of the stave church: The Moorehead Stave Church  

After the tour, the two of us moved on to visit a more current American icon, the Moorehead Dairy Queen, one of the oldest original stores where you walk up to a window to place your order. It is noteworthy for the fact that the famous Dilly Bar was invented at this very location and sports a 16-foot Dilly Bar statue. We of course indulged in a Dilly Bar each with a nod to our Dairy Queen loving son-in-law. 

A quick stop at the local quilt shop, Rae-Bon, made the day complete. 

For our final evening in Fargo, we all gathered for dinner at Famous Pizza Ranch in Casselton. 

Fargo is on the Red River of the North which marks the border between North Dakota and Minnesota. At one of our Happy Hour gatherings, Tom proposed a challenge question:  How is it that the Red River flows north, eventually into Hudson Bay, whereas the Mississippi River, only 75 miles away to the east, flows south into the Gulf of Mexico?  The wise-crack answer was that "water flows downhill!"  But how can downhill slopes be in opposite directions only 75 miles apart?  The answer turns out to be the Laurentian Continental Divide that runs from the Rockies in Western Montana across the northern US states and Canadian provinces separating the Hudson Bay watershed to the north from the Gulf of Mexico watershed to the south.  That dividing ridgeline dips south through North Dakota, then turns northeast running between the source of the Red River and Lake Itasca, the source of the Mississippi River.   

Tomorrow we cross the border into Canada for the next leg of the trip. And the Red River will continue to feature as part of our journey in Winnipeg.