Today we visited Bismarck, the capital of North Dakota, though to tell the truth it was also the capital of South Dakota until 1889, when both Dakota's got statehood.
The Capitol is an imposing, but plain, no, make that 'very plain', skyscraper, built in 1932 to replace the original which burned down, supposedly due to spontaneous combustion of oily rags in the janitors room!! Believe that if you wish, even the tour guide had trouble keeping a straight face.
Inside however, it manages to capture the spirit of the 30's, with excellent Art Deco decoration. It was designed by Chicago architects Holabird and Root, who were expert at the Chicago style (skyscrapers) and reflects the 30's style, reminiscent of the Chrysler building and Flash Gordon.
The lady who showed us round was very pleasant and I was impressed with the way that she handled the twenty odd school children who were with us.
The tour finished on the 18th floor with its very pleasant views of Bismarck.
There are four skyscraper capitols, Tallahassee (FL), Baton Rouge (LA) and Lincoln (NE) are the other three.
We went down to the ground floor (basement to you and me) where there is a cafe and we had our packed lunch and a cuppa.
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After lunch we went across the car park to the North Dakota Heritage Center (that is a museum to you and me). Although we wanted principally to visit the Merci Train Boxcar, we thought the museum would also be interesting.The boxcar is displayed, in a somewhat understated way, round the back of the museum, but very nicely in amongst the trees. Inside some of the artefacts are on display in a rather small display case in the basement of the building, still it was fun finding it and looking at the artefacts.
There are several halls in the museum. We found the fossil room very interesting, knowing that these great dinosaurs could be found within a few hundred miles of here was impressive.
There was a hall dedicated to the American Indian, which we found fascinating, particularly because there was an Indian docent there, a guy called Dakota Goodhouse. He was very happy to explain all sorts about the local tribal history, inparticular we found out about the Winter Count pictures. Each picture was made up of a number of small pictographs, each representing the story of a year. the whole picture made up something like a calendar. It would then be incumbent on one person to remember the story of each pictograph, thus being able to recite the history of the Winter Count. There was one on display, called the High Dog Winter Count, that showed the events of 1798 to 1912. This was quite fascinating. As was the concept that his tribe, the Lakota, may well have met up with Norse travelers in the 12th century somewhere round the Great Lakes, as shown by their understanding of the use of ponies, hundreds of years before they were introduced either by the Spanish to the South, in the 15th C, or by Lewis and Clarke in 1805. He also pointed out the controversy regarding Sacajawea, who was either a Shoshone girl abducted by the Lakota, or she was sakakawea, who was a Lakota girl who was abducted by the Shoshone, later to be reclaimed by the Lakota, then sold to the Canadian. We also noted the use of coracles and bodhran in the Mandan history and its possible link to the 12 C. Nordic travelers.
Following that we had a very pleasant conversation with three young workers, who were trying to build an interactive program for the Smart Board about agricultural development in North Dakota, though the conversation mostly centred round film locations and film bloops.
On the way back to the trailer we stopped at the Texas Roadhouse for a very pleasant steak.
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