Dakota Loyalists

I surely enjoyed your article on North Dakota in the May/June issue ("History Happened Here"). When I was twenty years old—married, with a newborn—I found myself, through a military commitment, stationed in North Dakota. That was 1968.

Each payday we would fill the tank of our 1961 Volkswagen Beetle and venture off to explore some other fantastic place. We saw the Roosevelt National Park Badlands, the geographical center of North America, the International Peace Gardens, Medora (and a Fourth of July parade), the “breaks of NoDak,” which protect the Mouse River and other such streams, and many other thrilling and out-of-the-way sites.

Oil derricks sticking up out of golden wheat fields, incredibly friendly people, the largest flocks of geese and ducks on earth, camps in all their varieties, and even Zap—which was once going to be the next Woodstock—are all in North Dakota.