North Dakota: A Guide to the Northern Prairie StateFederal Writers' Project of the Works Progress Administration for the State of North Dakota
History
North Dakota: A Guide to the Northern Prairie State
Federal Writers' Project of the Works Progress Administration for the State of North Dakota
North Dakota; North Dakota -- Guidebooks
Native building materials are becoming more popular in North Dakota,
and each year an increasing amount of construction utilizes native-made
brick and locally quarried sandstone. An interesting development in
the use of native materials is the rammed-earth building, the walls
of which consist of earth tamped until it is hard as rock. A house
and garage of this construction erected on the Scoria Lily ranch near
Hettinger (_see Tour 9_), because of their unusually low building
cost, have attracted wide attention. The use of native boulders as a
building material is well illustrated in the Cairn, home of Mr. and
Mrs. Clell G. Gannon in Bismarck.
Even with these attempts there is no native North Dakota architecture.
The schools, farms, grain elevators, and false-front business buildings
are common to the entire Midwest. Many of these, although old, do not
mellow, but have an air of impermanence, as though intended to serve
only until something better came along. A few houses, on the other
hand, follow the good, substantial precedent of the older Eastern homes
of the country. New buildings which go up represent a variety of forms,
a constant flux in ideas.
As evinced by buildings ranging from statehouse to filling stations,
North Dakota is architecturally in an irresolute frame of mind,
striving, willing to try anything suggested, yet unable, to date, to
evolve from these many trials a distinctive architectural contribution
of its own.
RECREATION
North Dakota offers many diverse forms of recreation among scenes
varying from the spectacle of the fantastically carved Badlands to the
severe beauty of the far reaching prairies. The Badlands are probably
the best known recreation area of the State. Here the two Roosevelt
Regional State Parks have been set aside, and many miles of bridle
paths and automobile roads are being built. The strangely colored
buttes form one of the most unusual scenic and geologic areas in the
United States, and contain endless treasures of petrified wood and
fossils of prehistoric plant and animal life.
More conventional is the beauty of the wooded Turtle Mountains, where
many attractive lakes provide swimming, fishing, and boating. In the
woods are countless varieties of wild flowers, and many species of song
birds. Of the many lakes in the Turtle Mountains, the largest and best
known are Metigoshe in the northwest part of the hills and Upsilon in
the east. Here well-equipped resorts have been established for the
accommodation of summer visitors.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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