Heritage Renewal

News from the Center for Heritage Renewal, North Dakota State University

Sunday, June 15, 2014

County Fairs

County fairs celebrate rural life and renew local communities across North Dakota every summer. The Center for Heritage Renewal recognizes the hard work and personal dedication it takes to organize these events and encourages everyone, citizens and travelers alike, to attend and support them. Visit the developing center page on county fairs.

posted by Center for Heritage Renewal # 5:36 PM

Wednesday, June 11, 2014

Big Smoke

Big Smoke: Old-Time Threshing Shows across North Dakota
Material for Press Release – immediate release – 6/11/14
Center for Heritage Renewal, North Dakota State University

The old-time threshing shows of the northern plains are among the finest examples of living history in all of North America—and you can take in these events across North Dakota from June to October.

“Living history” is the reenactment or recreation of historic events and activities by knowledgeable and dedicated citizens of the present. Quilters, buckskinners, military reenactment troupes, these are all practitioners of living history. The practitioners and perpetuators of old-time threshing, however, are distinguished by several things.

First, the steam threshers of today, like those of a century ago, hold and perpetuate specialized knowledge about a particular aspect of the past. To operate a steam engine or a stationary separator (threshing machine) takes know-how, not only of the technical sort (how to run the machines) but also of the cultural sort (how people organized themselves around them).

In addition to their expertise, these living historians have wonderful historical artifacts, and some of them are huge. The restoration, care, and exhibition of steam engines, threshing machines, and the other mechanical wonders of times past require investment, expertise, and dedication. It is not a casual commitment.

How lucky we are, then, that the threshers love to present their historic interests and artifacts to the public! Their machinery collections are not private stashes for their own enjoyment. They are created and showcased to educate and delight the public.

The Center for Heritage Renewal, North Dakota State University, has compiled a directory of old-time threshing shows across North Dakota. This public guide can be accessed from the home page of the center, at heritagerenewal.org.

The 2014 threshing show season begins this weekend with the Dale & Martha Hawk Museum Antique Farm Show, June 13-15 at the museum, near Wolford.

Professor Tom Isern, director of the center, is the author of Bull Threshers and Bindlestiffs: Harvesting and Threshing on the North American Plains—a history of old-time threshing on the Great Plains. “These threshing shows are real history in action,” says Isern. “In the days of steam, neighbors came together in threshing rings to bring in the bundles and pitch them into the separator. That’s just what they do today—gathering together as working neighbors, only now the job is to educate and entertain the rest of us.”

The big smoke of old-time threshing is an overlooked heritage resource of the prairies. The Center for Heritage Renewal encourages citizens and travelers to discover this heritage experience. Have some hearty food, talk with some knowledgeable operators, and get involved. Just ask – one of those guys might be willing to let you take a turn with a pitchfork. Leave the engine operation, though, to the experts!

posted by Center for Heritage Renewal # 9:13 AM

Sunday, June 01, 2014

Centennials & Jubilees

Centennials & Jubilees across North Dakota

Material for Press Release – immediate release – 6/1/14

Center for Heritage Renewal, North Dakota State University

Come summer, centennial and jubilee (other anniversary) celebrations go off across North Dakota like firecrackers on a string. These celebrations of community are full of meaning to the people involved and are loads of fun for visitors. What better way to get into the bona fide community cultures of the northern plains than to take part in these festivities? Who doesn’t love a street dance, anyway?

For the guidance of residents and travelers alike, the Center for Heritage Renewal, North Dakota State University, has put together a guide to centennials and jubilees across North Dakota this summer of 2014. Access the guide via the home page of the center.

Everyone knows a centennial is a hundred-year anniversary—but what’s a quasquicentennial, or a sesquicentennial? A quasquicentennial is a 125-year celebration, and a sesquicentennial means 150 years.

In North Dakota, we have a lot of quasquicentennials going on now. This is because we are on the 125-year horizon of what is known historically as the First Dakota Boom, a wave of settlement in the late 19^th Century.

We also have a lot of centennials going on now. This is because we are on the 100-year horizon of what is known historically as the Second Dakota Boom, another wave of settlement in the early years of the 20th Century.

Centennials and jubilees really do go off like firecrackers on a string, the strings being the historic railways that stimulated settlement across the northern plains. Railways generally were laid rapidly, with town-making taking place along the lines simultaneously, resulting in the same founding date for multiple towns along each line.

Ground zero for centennial celebrations this year is the area along Highway 200 west of the Missouri River. Town-making there took place with the building of the Killdeer Branch of the Northern Pacific Railway, Mandan to Killdeer, in 1913-14. That accounts for the centennials being celebrated this year in Beulah, Golden Valley, Dodge, Halliday, Dunn Center, and Killdeer.

These festivals are not only historic observances, they also have current importance to three groups of people associated with every celebrating community:

Expatriates – native daughters and sons who have moved on to other places, but remain associated with their home communities by mystic chords of memory. Centennials and jubilees bring them home, not just sentimentally but also physically. Ties are renewed, spirits refreshed.
Visitors – people with no particular tie to the community, but who enter into the festivities just for fun. Sometimes they arrive on purpose, and sometimes they are just lucky.
Residents – the greatest beneficiaries of all. Sure, after a celebration they are exhausted and swear they will never get involved in such a thing again, but the labor of love in which they have engaged renews ties to one another and to their particular place in the world. Centennials and jubilees are community builders.

The Center for Heritage Renewal congratulates every community celebrating a centennial or jubilee in 2014 and invites all to provide information about their festivities for the center’s web page and for its Facebook page, HeritageTrails.

The center, too, encourages citizens to take in the celebrations of their neighbor communities across the state and help make them memorable. It’s a fun and easy opportunity to soak up a little history.

posted by Center for Heritage Renewal # 2:23 PM