NORTH DAKOTA has no nationally recognizable landmarks, nor is the state's history particularly lurid or glamorous. It seems like somebody's quiet afterthought, a place to pass through. Grain silos loom on the horizon; the haystacks resemble loaves of bread. In the summer, with the sun baking in a defiantly blue sky and the wind raking strong fingers through tall fields of golden wheat and flax, North Dakota epitomizes all things rural American. Charming, picturesque - and a bit maddening.

The influx of Europeans into the Dakota Territory, spurred by the Homestead Act of 1862, precipitated a population and agricultural boom that lasted into the twentieth century. As in South Dakota, the fertile east is more thickly settled than the west, where vast cattle and sheep ranges predominate, and it was the east that was hardest hit by the so-called 500-year flood of 1997, when 1.7 million low-lying acres of farmland were inundated, and the entire state was declared a disaster area. Lately, North Dakotan lawmakers, ashamed of their state's reputation as an arctic wasteland, have proposed that the "North" be dropped from the state's title, leaving just "Dakota", a suggestion most locals vehemently protest.

From Fargo , the state's largest city, I-94 passes through the central capital of Bismarck , and on to the Bad Lands of the west, once cherished by President Theodore Roosevelt. Though the national park bearing his name is a key destination, Roosevelt would surely not be pleased about the continuing disfiguration of much of western North Dakota by strip mining operations.  TOP

East of the Missouri
Far more of North Dakota lies east of the big winding Missouri River , its uneven dividing line, than west. The Red River Valley , the state's furthest eastern strip, is home to two sizeable cities, easygoing Grand Forks and the less attractive Fargo . Pelicans, geese, swans, prairie chickens and ring-necked pheasants live off the sloughs and potholes of the rolling, glaciated prairie of south central North Dakota, while lakes and woodland dominate the north and the Canadian border. Spirit Lake Sioux Indian Reservation at Devils Lake is midway between Grand Forks and the low-slung Turtle Mountains, which are topped by Lake Metigoshe and the International Peace Garden (more of a political symbol than a compelling sight).

Western North Dakota
Anyone with a hankering to play cowboy could do worse than follow in the footsteps of Theodore Roosevelt , who declared "I never would have been President if it had not been for my experiences in North Dakota." Roosevelt initially came to the state in search of spiritual and physical renewal after the deaths (on the same day) of his mother and first wife. He dubbed what he discovered during his few years in this "grimly picturesque" area, with its clear skies, panoramic views and weird, colorful landforms, a "perfect freedom." The national park named after him is the choicest destination in the North Dakota Bad Lands (distinct from South Dakota's Badlands) that dominate the state's western half.

The Missouri River wriggles like a giant raggedy worm out of Montana, down past the capital, Bismarck , and into South Dakota. En route it is transformed into Lake Sakakawea, a virtual inland sea nearly two hundred miles long that's the state's premier water playground. Scenic state highways 1804 and 1806 follow the routes mapped out by the Lewis and Clark expedition in those respective years.  TOP