The airplane proved admirably suited to this part of the country. The clear dry atmosphere afforded ideal flying conditions, and almost every part of the State was suitable for landing fields, even without improvement. Municipalities became interested in the new mode of transportation, hangars were built, and runways laid out. Now all of the larger cities and towns have airports, and almost every small town has its landing field. Private planes are found at the airports, and here and there ships are seen on farms, where mechanically minded lads pilot them in leisure hours for their own pleasure. All planes and pilots must be licensed under a State law of 1929, as well as conform to the regulations of the Department of Commerce. Cheering crowds at Fargo, Grand Forks, and Pembina greeted the pilots of the first air mail between the Twin Cities and Winnipeg in 1928. Hundreds of letters and cards were carried on this flight for collectors who desired copies of the special commemorative cancellation stamp. North Dakotans' air mail letters now reach Washington, D. C. or Los Angeles 12 hours after mailing. Daily service on the original line is still maintained, and two other regular lines have been extended into the State, one between Chicago and Seattle which stops at Fargo and Bismarck, the other from Bismarck to Tulsa, Okla. Transportation has advanced with amazing rapidity since the Territory of Dakota was organized in 1861. Nevertheless, a severe winter such as that of 1935-36 is capable of halting communication almost completely. But even then, with automobile traffic at a standstill because of blocked roads, trains delayed because of mountainous snowdrifts, and planes grounded because snow and ice made landing too hazardous, the radio still kept the State in constant touch with the outside world. THE PRESS AND RADIO Whether or not the first printing press in North Dakota, brought to St. Joseph (Walhalla) by Rev. Alonzo Barnard in 1848, was ever used in the State is a matter of conjecture. When Mr. Barnard, a Presbyterian minister, was transferred to Dakota, he took his press--a gift from students at Oberlin College--overland from the Cass Lake (Minnesota) Reservation to Red Lake, by canoe across the lake and down the Red Lake and Red Rivers to Pembina, then by oxcart to St. Joe. Here he may have used it, as he did in Minnesota, to publish news letters and pamphlets for his parishioners, but nothing printed on it in North Dakota has been preserved.