Old Red Trail

The Old Red Trail committee is developing a website about their efforts to develop a scenic byway between Mandan and Dickinson. The site can be found at www.oldredtrail.org. Check the site out to see what is going on with the group and what activities they are promoting.

Prairie Public Television has produced a documentary about the Old Red Trail as well. More information can be found at their website, which provides a great deal of interesting information about the Old Red Trail and highway development in North Dakota. They have a timeline of the development of the Old Red Trail into Highway 10, and later into Interstate 94. They also have a history of how the development of the highway affected the communities along the route with postcards and photographs.

Museum Staff Helps Preserve Historic Farmsite

On Saturday, October 20, 2007 the Dickinson Museum Center staff assisted volunteers for Preservation North Dakota in their efforts to restore the Hutmacher farmsite near Manning, North Dakota. Museum staff Jessica Magnuson and Danielle Stuckle helped with efforts to install a new roof on the east end of the house, over one of the bedrooms. The roof is constructed in several layers including cedar rafters, willow branches, flax straw, and clay. While the materials are environmentally friendly and available locally, it is labor intensive work. The Dickinson Museum Center staff have been involved in the project throughout the summer and fall of 2007, and Stuckle serves on the board for Preservation North Dakota. Work on the site will resume in the spring of 2008 with efforts to stabilize the walls of the house and rebuild the rest of the roof.

The Hutmacher farm is on the National Register of Historic Places, and was listed twice on Preservation North Dakota’s 3 Most Endangered Properties (2000 and 2003). The site consists of a house, barn, garage, granary, and chicken house. The buildings were each constructed of stone slab walls covered by a mud roof. The farm was lived on from 1928 to 1979. For more information on the project, visit www.prairieplaces.org.

Free Workshop

The Dickinson Museum Center will host a free family history workshop on preserving and organizing family papers and photographs. The workshop runs from 6:30 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. on Tuesday, October 30, 2007 at the Dickinson Museum Center (Joachim Museum).

For more information contact Danielle Stuckle at 701-456-6225, e-mail info@dickinsonmuseumcenter.org, or visit www.dickinsonmuseumcenter.org.

October is American Archives Month

October is celebrated by archivists throughout the nation as Archives Month. This is a time when we push especially hard to promote and celebrate archival collections in museums, historical societies, and libraries. Although published books and 3-dimensional artifacts can usually be found in archival collections, archives generally have unpublished papers as the core of their focus.

Letters, diaries, business records, photographs, and ephemera (concert programs, movie tickets, etc...) are the bulk of archival collections. This material is integral to researchers everywhere, especially sociologists and historians and anyone studying local communities. People can use archival collections to find information about the businesses in local communities, family and neighborhood history, and many other unique discoveries.

Archives are much more than record repositories, they maintain the valuable memories and heritage of a community. Help us celebrate Archives month. Contact the Dickinson Museum Center for more information about maintaining personal papers, donating papers to an archive, researching archival collections, or volunteering time to help organize and maintain these valuable records.