BISMARCK — The public is invited to the opening of the State Historical Society of North Dakota’s new exhibit, “North Dakota 250 Road Trip: Our American Story,” with a ribbon-cutting ceremony at 9 a.m. on Wednesday, July 1, at the North Dakota Heritage Center & State Museum in Bismarck.

Following the ribbon-cutting ceremony, visitors can enjoy light refreshments, live music by Mythtickle, face painting, Scouting America Pinewood Derby races and opportunities to visit with agency curators, archivists and community partners until 1 p.m.

Developed as part of the America250 commemoration, the free exhibit explores North Dakota’s significant role in the American story through themes of travel, migration, innovation, and community. Visitors can explore highlights of how North Dakota has influenced the nation and how the nation has shaped us, beginning with stories dating back to the 1770s from tribal nations.

“We designed this exhibit as a road trip through North Dakota’s past, present, and future,” Exhibitions Manager David Newell said. “We are encouraging people to discover new stories and explore places they haven’t visited yet.”

Visitors can plan their own road trips, contribute to the state’s story on a kiosk, research longtime owners of Centennial Farms and learn how to explore your roots.

“This exhibit is an American story, a North Dakota story, and a personal story,” Audience Engagement & Museums Director Kimberly Jondahl said. “We invite people to dive into their own family histories using State Archives resources in the genealogy area. Do you know where your own people were in 1776?”

These programs are part of the ND250 commemoration celebrating our country’s 250th birthday.

The North Dakota Heritage Center & State Museum, located at 612 E. Boulevard Ave. in Bismarck, is open Monday-Friday, 8 a.m.-5 p.m., and Saturday-Sunday, 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Admission is free.

BURLINGTON — A Tioga woman was seriously injured in a two-vehicle crash one mile west of Burlington in Ward County on Sunday afternoon.

According to the North Dakota Highway Patrol, the woman was traveling west on U.S. Highway 2 at approximately 2:29 p.m. when an eastbound 2020 Subaru Forester, driven by an 84-year-old Burlington man, crossed the median and entered the westbound lanes, striking her vehicle head-on.

The Burlington man died at the scene. The Tioga woman suffered serious injuries and was airlifted to a Minot hospital. Both drivers were wearing seat belts, the Highway Patrol said.

The crash remains under investigation.

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Theodore Roosevelt consistently ranks among the nation’s top five most popular presidents. On this upcoming July 4 holiday, 107 years after his death, T.R. is finally getting his own presidential library – but it’s not where you might think. That library is rising out of the prairie grass in the North Dakota Badlands – a 96,000-square-foot tribute to our 26th president.

It’s as grand as his likeness on Mt. Rushmore, except a lot more subtle, and that’s by design, says architect Craig Dykers. “Nature is transformative here,” he said. “It transformed Theodore Roosevelt, and it will transform new visitors to this library.”

Its gently sloping roof mimics the surrounding buttes, covered in native grasses and walking paths – yes, walking paths on the roof. The hope is they’ll get visitors up and out for a commanding view of Theodore Roosevelt National Park right next door.

“We wanted something that just felt primitive,” said Dykers. “And so, this form emerging from the Earth, it felt like it just arrived from the Earth.”‘ Dykers said.

Inside, a string of skylights will provide almost all the natural illumination the library would ever need, held up by walls made solely of compressed earth.

Everywhere we looked during our privileged sneak-peek back in March, it was hard to tell where nature ended and the library began. Its $450 million price tag is the biggest thing the small town of Medora, North Dakota, has ever experienced.

If you’re wondering why T.R.’s library is way out here instead of his native New York, it’s because were it not for his experiences way out here, Roosevelt said, he never would have been president.

Edward O’Keefe, CEO of the library, and author of the recent book “The Loves of Theodore Roosevelt: The Women Who Created a President” (Simon & Schuster), said, “Theodore Roosevelt grew up as a sickly, asthmatic child who lived his life through books and imagination. So here he is, 24 years old, on the plains and Badlands of North Dakota, and he’s living the life he only read about in books.”

But the reason he took up residence in the Badlands is hardly a happy one, said O’Keefe: “He was a broken man, in a broken land, and nature was his healer.”

In a tragic twist, Teddy Roosevelt’s mother, Mittie, and his young wife, Alice, both died in the same house, on the same day: Valentine’s Day 1884. “The light has gone out of my life,” Roosevelt wrote in his diary – the date marked by a bold X.

“At the funeral of his wife and mother – it was a double funeral – he was so desolate and so depressed, that they were concerned for his own safety,” said O’Keefe.

After settling his affairs (which included asking his sister to raise his newborn daughter, Alice), he headed West, alone. He’d been to the Dakota Territory just a year prior to hunt a pair of bison – the two that still hang in Roosevelt’s Long Island home to this day.

He dug in, and began living a kind of life many Dakota cowboys thought he wasn’t prepared to live. They were wrong.

O’Keefe said, “I think he had a ‘life wish.’ He realized that no matter how rich you are, no matter how privileged you are, that you don’t know what’s going to happen next. If you want to get something done in this world, if you want to love somebody, if you want to accomplish something, you gotta go.”

And it’s that kind of rugged, raw, and real intellectual journey that the library wants visitors not just to look at and to grasp, but experience. “Library and museum are the two worst descriptions of what the TR Library actually is,” said O’Keefe. “It’s a call to adventure.”

It’s the kind of place that couldn’t have been built even five years ago, because artificial intelligence is such a large part of it. For example, you don’t have to imagine what it’s like to be in T.R.’s boots; you can actually see it.

O’Keefe said, “We have created the world’s first presidential archive in AI. Participants can come here to the TR Library, and have an in-person conversation with an avatar of T.R. You do not come unprepared for a conversation with Theodore Roosevelt; he will have none of it.”

It will be the only presidential library that will have hitching posts for your horse. You can take a nature walk on a mile-long path through the prairie. You can sit by a campfire and hear tall tales of life on the range, and step into his cabin at the Elkhorn Ranch.

But for all the fun, there’s a serious bent, too. He was a man of his times, and his times weren’t always flattering.

“I wasn’t interested in doing a legacy project for Theodore Roosevelt,” said T.R.’s great-great-grandson, Theodore Roosevelt V.  “There’s plenty of things named after him, plenty of statues. But the idea of just sort of basking in the glow of somebody and saying ‘This is a great man, let’s all look at him,’ isn’t particularly compelling. Normally, presidential libraries – it’s the principal [reason], the president trying to cement the first chapter of his legacy. In this case, we’ve got a hundred years-plus to be able to look back at his legacy, to really understand what that legacy is, what the lasting impacts were. We get to face those issues head-on.”

Including Roosevelt’s racist views of indigenous peoples, whom he often referred to as savages. 

“We had a land blessing out here with the five tribes,” said Roosevelt, “to bless the land and really bring them into the project, so that we were working with them and making sure that their voices were heard, and that we were representing things appropriately.”

The library has taken possession of a statue of Roosevelt that was removed in 2022 from outside the American Museum of Natural History in New York. Critics argued that the message of a White man elevated above both a Native American and an African symbolized racial superiority.  

“We are here to preserve the life and legacy of Theodore Roosevelt,” said O’Keefe. “I think it’s important that we eventually do something that contextualizes it appropriately, but not at the opening.”

If the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library has any message, it’s that courage and strength often come from personal tragedy, mis-steps, mistakes, and misunderstandings. As he famously said, it’s being in the arena that counts. And that, more than anything, may be the hindsight the library has to offer.

“He does not like the critic,” said O’Keefe. “He does not like the person on the sidelines pointing out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. He likes the person who tries and fails. That’s a powerful lesson for today. I want kids in particular to come in and understand that if you want to change something in this world, you have got to be the source of that change.”

       
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Story produced by Aria Shavelson. Editor: George Pozderec. 

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