North Dakota

The Fargodome is an indoor athletic stadium in Fargo, North Dakota, on the campus of North Dakota State University. Opened in late 1992, the facility... is owned by the City of Fargo, built on university land. Its seating capacity exceeds 19,000 for football and over 25,000 for full arena concerts. It is the home field of the NDSU Bison football team, which competes in NCAA Division I, in the Football Championship Subdivision . The Fargodome contains two scoreboards on each endzone, four large video screens , two large electronic message centers below the scoreboards, as well as four stats boards all of which were installed by Daktronics in 2002. Prior to the 1993 season, the Bison played at Dacotah Field. The stadium also plays host to many large concerts, sporting events, and trade shows. The Fargodome has held events such as the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus, USHRA's Monster Jam, Rib Fest, WWE, WCW, the Asics Cadet and Junior National Wrestling Championships and many local, regional and national events. The Fargodome's Gate City Bank Theatre is home to theatre, both locally-produced and touring.
more

The Patterson Hotel was a prominent and luxurious hotel located in Bismarck, North Dakota that was home to the Nonpartisan League and well known for... its continued construction that lasted over twenty years. The hotel was a major hotspot for politicians throughout the 1960s. First named the McKenzie Hotel, the structure was constructed by Alexander McKenzie and first opened its doors on New Year's Day, 1911. At the time it opened, the ten-story, 150-room hotel was the tallest structure in Bismarck, and would retain this distinction until the new North Dakota State Capitol was completed in 1934. Edward Patterson, a close friend of McKenzie, would later purchase the hotel. Patterson had constructed the adjacent Soo Hotel, also listed on the National Register, in 1906. The hotel was renamed the Patterson Hotel in 1927, shortly after the passing of Alexander McKenzie. One of the hotel's most well-known facts is that construction continued on the structure long after it opened. Construction was finally completed in the 1930s, more than twenty years after it first began.
more

The Sorlie Memorial Bridge, also known as the Red River Bridge was built in 1929 by the Minneapolis Bridge Company to connect the cities of Grand... Forks, North Dakota and East Grand Forks, Minnesota. It was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1999. The Sorlie Memorial Bridge replaced a swing bridge on the same site that was constructed in 1889. It is a Parker through truss bridge with two truss spans and rides on rails to accommodate the everchanging banks of the Red River of the North. The Sorlie Memorial Bridge was named for North Dakota's 14th governor, Arthur G. Sorlie. Plaques on either end identify Sorlie as "a true friend of better roads and bridges." At the time, the bridge was the only vehicular crossing in the area, and was important for carrying U.S. Route 2, a transcontinental route. It is the oldest documented Parker truss design in the state, and its two spans of 283 feet are the longest riveted Parker through trusses in the state.
more

The Chateau de Mores is a historic home built by the Marquis de Mores in 1883 as a hunting lodge and summer home for his family and guests. The home... is now part of the 128-acre Chateau de Mores State Historic Site, which also includes Chimney Park and de Mores Memorial Park, in Medora, North Dakota. The Marquis was a French aristocrat and entrepreneur who came to the Dakota badlands in 1883 to establish a new kind of cattle operation. He planned to slaughter and cold pack his cattle and ship it east in refrigerated rail cars. The slaughterhouse was built in the town which the Marquis founded and named for his wife, Medora. He built many structures in the town for those he employed in his operations, including St. Mary's Catholic Church. For three years the small town bustled, but in 1886 the operation collapsed due to drought, competition from meat packers back east, and the Marquis' own lack of business experience and the plant was abandoned. The Marquis and his family returned to Europe, but left behind a small town rife with the flavor and romanticism of the American Old West. The chateau was occupied seasonally by the family for only three years from 1883-1886.
more

Lawrence Welk was an American musician, accordionist, bandleader, and television impresario, who hosted The Lawrence Welk Show from 1955 to 1982. His style came to be known to his large number of radio, television, and live-performance fans as "champagne music". In 1996, Welk was ranked #43 on TV... Guide's 50 Greatest TV Stars of All Time. Welk was born in the German-speaking community of Strasburg, North Dakota. He was sixth of the eight children of Ludwig and Christiana Welk, ethnic Germans who emigrated to America in 1892 from Selz, Kutschurgan District, in the German-speaking area north of Odessa . The family lived on a homestead that today is a tourist attraction. They spent the cold North Dakota winter of their first year under an upturned wagon covered in sod. Welk decided on a career in music and persuaded his father to buy a mail-order accordion for $400 . He promised his father that he would work on the farm until he was 21, in repayment for the accordion.
more

Roger Eugene Maris was an American baseball right fielder who played 12 seasons in Major League Baseball on four teams, from 1957 through 1968. Maris hit a record 61 home runs during the 1961 season for the New York Yankees, breaking Babe Ruth's single-season record of 60 home runs in 1927.... Maris' record stood for the next 37 years. Maris appeared in seven World Series games. He was a two-time American League Most Valuable Player , seven-time All-Star , and an AL Gold Glove winner in 1960. His accomplishment of 61 home runs in a season, which was greatly debated in its own time, came back to the forefront in 1998, when the record was broken by both Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa. On September 24, 2011, the 50th anniversary of Maris' home run record was celebrated in Yankee Stadium. Roger Maris was the son of Croatian immigrants. He was born Roger Eugene Maras in Hibbing, Minnesota. He grew up in Grand Forks and Fargo, North Dakota, where he attended Shanley High School.
more

Warren Minor Christopher was an American lawyer, diplomat and politician. During Bill Clinton's first term as President, Christopher served as the 63rd Secretary of State. He also served as Deputy Attorney General in the Lyndon Johnson Administration, and as Deputy Secretary of State in the Carter... Administration. At the time of his death, he was a Senior Partner at O'Melveny & Myers in the firm's Century City, California, office. He also served as a professor in the College Honors Program at the University of California at Los Angeles. At the behest of Al Gore, Christopher oversaw the Vice President's Florida recount effort in the aftermath of the disputed United States Presidential election, 2000. Born in Scranton, North Dakota, the son of Ernest Christopher, a bank manager, and his wife Catherine, Christopher graduated from Hollywood High School, and attended the University of Redlands, before transferring to the University of Southern California. He was a member of the college fraternity Kappa Sigma Sigma. He graduated magna cum laude from the University of Southern California in February 1945.
more

Ann Sothern was an American film and television actress whose career spanned six decades. Sothern was born in Valley City, North Dakota, but was raised in Minneapolis, Minnesota, where she graduated from Minneapolis Central High School in 1926. Sothern left home and began her film career as an... extra in the 1927 film Broadway Nights at the age of 18. During 1929 and 1930, she appeared as a chorus girl in such films as The Show of Shows and Whoopee! . She appeared on Broadway and had a trained voice, occasionally singing in films. On Broadway in 1931, she had leading roles in America's Sweetheart and in Everybody's Welcome . In 1934, Sothern signed a contract with Columbia Pictures, but after two years the studio released her. In 1936, she was signed by RKO Radio Pictures and after a string of films that failed to attract an audience, Sothern left RKO and was signed to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, making her first film for them in 1939.
more

Montana is a state in the Western United States. The western third of Montana contains numerous mountain ranges. Smaller "island ranges" are found... in the central third of the state, for a total of 77 named ranges that are part of the Rocky Mountains. This geographical fact is reflected in the state's name, derived from the Spanish word montaña . Montana has several nicknames, none official, including: "Big Sky Country" and "The Treasure State", and slogans that include "Land of the Shining Mountains" and more recently, "The Last Best Place". Montana is the 4th most extensive, but the 7th least populous and the 3rd least densely populated of the 50 United States. The economy is primarily based on services, with ranching, wheat farming, oil and coal mining in the east, and lumber, tourism, and hard rock mining in the west. Millions of tourists annually visit Glacier National Park, the Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument, and three of the five entrances to Yellowstone National Park. The name Montana comes from the Spanish word Montaña meaning "mountain" or more broadly, "mountainous country".
more

Minnesota is a U.S. state located in the Midwestern United States. Minnesota was carved out of the eastern half of the Minnesota Territory and... admitted to the Union as the thirty-second state on May 11, 1858. Known as the "Land of 10,000 Lakes", the state's name comes from a Dakota word for "sky-tinted water". Those waters, together with forests, parks, and wilderness areas, offer residents and tourists a variety of outdoor recreational opportunities. Minnesota is the 12th most extensive and the 21st most populous of the U.S. states. Nearly 60% of its residents live in the Minneapolis-Saint Paul metropolitan area , the center of transportation, business, industry and education and home to an internationally known arts community. The remainder of the state consists of western prairies now given over to intensive agriculture; deciduous forests in the southeast, now cleared, farmed and settled; and the less populated North Woods, used for mining, forestry, and recreation. Minnesota is known for its relatively mixed social and political orientations, and has a high rate of civic participation and voter turnout.
more