North Dakota
The story of North Dakota's youngest 'vagrants' in 1923
Stutsman County officials faced an unusual challenge with some young vagrants wandering the area in 1923.
The problem started on a Sunday when residents of the Windsor area brought two boys to Jamestown. The boys, ages 11 and 8, were found in the area and claimed they had been traveling alone for a “fortnight,” according to newspaper reports.
A fortnight is two weeks, in case you are not familiar with the time reference.
The children said they had been sleeping in hay and straw stacks in the fields and eating food begged at farmhouses along their route or snitched from vegetable garden plots.
Officials brought them to juvenile court, where Judge Coffey asked them how they had come to be traveling on their own.
According to the boys, they were traveling with their parents and five siblings by wagon across North Dakota headed toward Dickinson. Somewhere along the way, they had grown tired and stopped for a little nap. When they awoke, the wagon and their family were nowhere to be seen.
I suppose a family of seven children is difficult to keep track of, but it is no excuse to lose two of them along the way.
The children claimed they had tried to track the wagon but were never able to gain sight of their family.
According to newspaper articles, the children were placed under the Stutsman County sheriff’s authority while officials made attempts to locate their parents.
The newspaper coverage referred to the children as “North Dakota’s youngest vagrants” but also included some skepticism about their story. The article used the term “they said” often and presented no other information about the story.
It appears there were no follow-up articles about the children in any of the regional newspapers.
They may have been runaways, or they might have gotten lost by inattentive parents on a wagon trip across North Dakota
No matter how they came to be traveling along across North Dakota, they managed to spend a fortnight living off the land and surviving.
Author Keith Norman can be reached at
www.KeithNormanBooks.com
(KNOX) – The North Dakota Board of Higher Education is being asked to weigh in on the reconstruction of Ray Richard’s Golf Course in Grand Forks. The upgrades and deferred maintenance improvements are the result of the pending DeMers Avenue/42nd Street Underpass project.
UND sold 6.5 acres of the nine hole course to the North Dakota Department of Transportation for the grade separation. During the road construction the golf course will be realigned and reduced to a par 34 course. UND will also address underground utilities and irrigation systems. The total cost is around 4.5 million dollars.
The course will close for the 2026 and 2027 seasons. The goal is to reopen in 2028. SBHE is expected to approve the design at its April 30th meeting.
Crews are expected to begin preliminary work on the $90 million dollar underpass project this week. The initial phase will have minimal impacts to traffic on both 42nd Street and DeMers Avenue. Larger impacts are expected later this summer.
MAPLETON, N.D. (Valley News Live) – Casselton Fire responded to a shop fire in rural Mapleton on Saturday afternoon, according to Casselton Fire Chief John Hejl.
Casselton Fire was dispatched to the scene at 3:30 p.m. Saturday. Windy conditions escalated the fire before crews arrived, Hejl said.
Firefighters used defensive and offensive lines to control the fire upon arrival.
Casselton Fire was assisted by Cass County Sheriff’s Office, Casselton Ambulance, West Fargo Police Department, Davenport Fire and Mapleton Fire.
Copyright 2026 KVLY. All rights reserved.
A do not use water advisory issued by the City of Finley, North Dakota. April 2026.
FINLEY, N.D. (KFGO) – The city of Finley, North Dakota has been without potable water since Friday due to a suspected water main leak. Steele County Emergency Management says it is unclear how long it will take to restore water services in the city.
The North Dakota Department of Environmental Quality says the available water in Finley has been deemed unusable for drinking, cooking, bathing and washing dishes or laundry.
The water system will need to be flushed and samples that say the water is safe will need to be collected for the water advisory to be lifted.
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