North Dakota
New book by UND alum describes 1918 Spanish flu in North Dakota – UND Today
Outbreak killed more than 1,000 North Dakotans, writes Christopher Price in ‘Big Pandemic on the Prairie,’ published by The Digital Press at UND
Before the 21st century’s COIVD-19, there was the 1918 Influenza pandemic. Christopher Price, who earned his bachelor’s degree in History at UND in 2013 and is now a faculty member at New River Community and Technical College in West Virginia, has published a new book, “Big Pandemic on the Prairie: The Spanish Flu in North Dakota.”
“Big Pandemic on the Prairie” tells the story of how North Dakota responded to the most devastating pandemic of the 20th century: the 1918 influenza outbreak, which killed more than a thousand people in the state and millions globally. By digging deeply into local newspapers and archives, Price developed an engaging and thought-provoking story of resistance, resilience, reliance and sacrifice across the state.
In many ways, this story is uncannily similar to what our communities experienced in the 21st century, he observes.
These similarities explain the origins of this book. “I kept seeing people on TV and the Internet making claims that the COVID-19 pandemic and public health restrictions were unprecedented,” Price said. “But I’d learned a little bit about the Spanish flu from reading various sources, and I also remember Prof. Kim Porter, my committee chair at UND, mentioning a relative who had died while mustering out of the American Expeditionary Force in Florida. He had gone to Europe and survived the Great War, but he died of the Spanish flu before getting back to his family.”
The book will appeal to a wide range of audiences, from people trying to add historical context to the COVID pandemic to college students interested in the history of public health and medicine, and the intersections of local, global and social histories as well. .
The book offers some surprises for those interested in comparing the Spanish flu and COVID-19 pandemics, Price notes. In 1918, for example, “there was a fairly vocal minority who opposed vaccinations that were created and administered pretty much immediately. On the other hand, there was not the partisan divide in 1918 that was very evident with the COVID-19 pandemic.”
Moreover, the book is more than policy and politics, Price said: “The most interesting source was probably letters from the Ferdinand Shoemaker Collection at the University of Wyoming. when Dr. Shoemaker’s worked at an Indian reservation hospital in North Dakota around the time of the Spanish flu,” he said.
“Without giving too much away, his records included a story of sex, drugs and guns.”
Like all books from The Digital Press at the University of North Dakota, “Big Pandemic on the Prairie” is available as a free download and as a low-cost paperback. This is Price’s second book with the press. His first book, “The Old Church on Walnut Street: A Story of Immigrants and Evangelicals” first appeared in 2014 and then as a revised edition in 2018.
William Caraher, publisher at The Digital Press notes: “This book is another fantastic example of the press’s commitment to authors with local connections and the history of the state and the region. Price’s book makes a unique and entertaining contribution to the history of North Dakota and we’re excited to make it available to as wide an audience as possible.”
Interested readers are invited to download the book from the website of The Digital Press.
North Dakota
North Dakota officials celebrate being among big winners in federal rural health funding
OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — Tony Osburn scored 27 points as Omaha beat North Dakota 90-79 on Thursday.
Osburn shot 8 of 12 from the field, including 5 for 8 from 3-point range, and went 6 for 9 from the line for the Mavericks (8-10, 1-2 Summit League). Paul Djobet scored 18 points and added 12 rebounds. Ja’Sean Glover finished with 10 points.
The Fightin’ Hawks (8-11, 2-1) were led by Eli King, who posted 21 points and two steals. Greyson Uelmen added 19 points for North Dakota. Garrett Anderson had 15 points and two steals.
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The Associated Press created this story using technology provided by Data Skrive and data from Sportradar.
MINOT — Minot’s District 3 is home to Reps. Jeff Hoverson and Lori VanWinkle, two of the most controversial members of the Legislature, but maybe not for much longer.
District 3, like all odd-numbered districts in our state, is on the ballot this election cycle, and the House incumbents there
have just drawn two serious challengers.
Tim Mihalick and Blaine DesLauriers, each with a background in banking, have announced campaigns for those House seats. Mihalick is a senior vice president at First Western Bank & Trust and serves on the State Board of Higher Education. DesLauriers is vice chair of the board and senior executive vice president at First International Bank & Trust.
The entry into this race has delighted a lot of traditionally conservative Republicans in North Dakota
Hoverson, who has worked as a Lutheran pastor, has frequently made headlines with his bizarre antics. He was
banned from the Minot International Airport
after he accused a security agent of trying to touch his genitals. He also
objected
to a Hindu religious leader participating in the Legislature’s schedule of multi-denominational invocation leaders and, on his local radio show, seemed to suggest that Muslim cultures that force women to wear burkas
have it right.
Hoeverson has also backed legislation to mandate prayer and the display of the Ten Commandments in schools, and to encourage the end of Supreme Court precedent prohibiting bans on same sex marriage.
Tom Stromme / The Bismarck Tribune
VanWinkle, for her part, went on a rant last year in which she suggested that women struggling with infertility have been cursed by God
(she later claimed her comments, which were documented in a floor speech, were taken out of context)
before taking
a weeklong ski vacation
during the busiest portion of the legislative session (she continued to collect her daily legislative pay while absent). When asked by a constituent why she doesn’t attend regular public forums in Minot during the legislative session,
she said she wasn’t willing to “sacrifice” any more of her personal time.
The incumbents haven’t officially announced their reelection bids, but it’s my practice to treat all incumbents as though they’re running again until we learn otherwise.
In many ways, VanWinkle and Hoverson are emblematic of the ascendant populist, MAGA-aligned faction of the North Dakota Republican Party. They are on the extreme fringe of conservative politics, and openly detest their traditionally conservative leaders. Now they’ve got challengers who are respected members of Minot’s business community, and will no doubt run well-organized and well-funded campaigns.
If the 2026 election is a turning point in the
internecine conflict among North Dakota Republicans
— the battle to see if our state will be governed by traditional conservatives or culture war populists — this primary race in District 3 could well be the hinge on which it turns.
In the 2024 cycle, there was an effort, largely organized by then-Rep. Brandon Prichard, to push far-right challengers against more moderate incumbent Republicans.
It was largely unsuccessful.
Most of the candidates Prichard backed lost, including Prichard himself, who was
defeated in the June primary
by current Rep. Mike Berg, a candidate with a political profile not all that unlike that of Mihalick and DesLauriers.
But these struggles among Republicans are hardly unique to North Dakota, and the populist MAGA faction has done better elsewhere. In South Dakota, for instance, in the 2024 primary,
more than a dozen incumbent Republicans were swept out of office.
Can North Dakota’s normie Republicans avoid that fate? They’ll get another test in 2026, but recruiting strong challengers like Mihalick and DesLauriers is a good sign for them.
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