This Road Trip Takes You To The Most Fascinating Historical Sites In North Dakota
By Leah|Published October 23, 2018
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Leah
Author
Leah moved to North Dakota when she was 12 years old and has traveled from the Red River Valley to the badlands and many places in between. She loves small-town life and currently enjoys living on a small farm in the ND prairie. She's always had a passion for writing and has participated in novel writing challenges such as NaNoWriMo multiple times. Her favorite part about this job is recognizing small businesses that deserve a boost and seeing the positive affect her articles can have on their traffic, especially in rural areas that might have otherwise gone overlooked.
There are so many pieces of history to be found all throughout North Dakota. Many of them are even nationally designated historical sites and lots are available for people to visit. Why not make an entire road trip out of checking some of them out to get that true historic experience? It’s hard to pick the coolest ones to visit, so we focused mostly on one area of the state – central ND – but you can find awesome historic places all across the prairie. For now, let’s hit the road!
This road trip will take you across part of south central North Dakota with driving time of about 5 hours and 25 minutes.
For the full interactive map of the route, click here. This is about 320 miles of driving so you might want to split it up over a couple of days, especially to get in enough time at each stop to experience them.
The first stop on this historic journey is at one of the oldest places in the state: On-A-Slant Village in Mandan.
The On-A-Slant Village is part of North Dakota's Fort Abraham Lincoln State Park, a history extravaganza. Not only does the park have the fort buildings, it also has the site of an early Indian village. Centuries ago, long before the European settlers came here, this place was full of earth lodges. You can explore the reconstructions of the lodges today.
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After that amazing spot, you'll be headed off to a quaint farm where the humble beginnings of a world famous person was.
Lawrence Welk was a huge music and television star back in his day and is still remembered well by many. He was born right here in North Dakota, and his birthplace is just outside of Strasburg. Today, it has been kept preserved to be just as it was back when he lived there and you can visit it.
This huge and beautiful catholic church has a lot of history behind it. The stories this church shares with the town and its residents goes back decades, and the art inside makes it an amazing spot to check out.
The road trip continues with a stop in the lovely town of Ellendale and a visit to its awesome opera house.
There aren't many opera houses remaining in North Dakota, but the Ellendale Opera House is still around even at well over a hundred years old. This spot is still being carefully restored but already is looking amazing. It is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
After some time at the opera, the route will take you north to Jamestown where you will go to the place that had a huge role in making North Dakota a state.
The historic Stutsman County Courthouse is one of very few of its kind. Not only is it one of the only courthouses in North Dakota with this type of architecture, it also is the place where North Dakota's statehood was born. As an unusual yet fascinating added bonus, this historic site also has one of the largest collections of pressed tin in the midwest.
After hooking back around southwest to Napoleon, the drive finishes off with the remnants of a time since past, laid to rest in a spectacular fashion.
One of the key and integral parts of the Peace Garden State's history is its agriculture. And what better place to see one huge part of that history that has since become completely defunct than Dinosaurs on the Prairie. Located just outside of Napoleon, this ridge has tons of threshing machines trailing up the hill. You are welcomed by the landowner to walk up the ridge and enjoy the view while getting up close and personal to this decades-old machines.
After all is said and done, you’ll definitely have learned a thing or two after experiencing this journey! There is so much more history to experience here in this legendary state. Although we can’t go back in time and see it for ourselves, we can definitely take a glimpse of that time long passed with things like old film footage.
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