Came across this political cartoon in the Jamestown Sun from Memorial Day 1935

I think it still holds true today.

This column ran in the May 25 edition of the Prairie Post.

People were revving up their roosters 75 years ago in Jamestown this week.
The first “Rooster Day” was held on May 22, 1935. It was a combination of a livestock show and a chance for farmers, and I suppose a few city folks who kept a few chickens, to sell their excess male chickens.
In attendance were two companies buying the roosters by the pound. My guess a lot of these early day alarm clocks were destined for a can of soup.
But before they started down the path towards being “um-um good” the roosters got to take part in a few competitions. Main Street of Jamestown was turned into a combination poultry beauty contest and track meet.
Wire fences were set up for Jamestown’s first ever Rooster Derby. Taking top honors was a crower owned by B.G. Hansen. Taking second prize was a bird owned by T.G. Schmidt with third place honors taken by Ben Gilbertson.
We might worry a little bit about the race being fixed. Gilbertson was also the official starter for the Rooster Derby.
But Rooster Day in Jamestown wasn’t just about raw chicken speed. It was also a beauty contest.
B.R. Cebula of Buchanan was the big winner in the best-looking rooster competition. We’ll have to assume the chicken soup he ended up in must have tasted wonderful.
Henry Vanderberg of Eldridge won top honors for the oldest rooster. Don’t know how old the bird was or how Vanderberg was able to prove it. Philip Merck of Jamestown had the heaviest rooster and Merle Anderson of Edgeley brought the bird with the longest spurs.
Another of the big prizes went to Alex Clemens. Judges, I’m sure after much deliberation, awarded him the prize for having the homeliest rooster at Rooster Day.
You’ve got to wonder what that can of chicken soup tasted like.
But we have to remember Rooster Days was not just about fast and pretty, or ugly, birds. It was meant as a chance for people to sell their roosters for processing.
The two companies bought nearly 4,200 pounds of fowl. If the birds averaged about 3 pounds each that means almost 1,500 roosters were sold and headed to the great soup can in the sky that day.
Which tells us two things.
Farming was more diversified and a lot of people had chickens back in 1935. I don’t know if we could find 1,500 roosters in the entire region today.
And back in 1935, during the depths of the depression, people would do almost anything for a chance to have a little fun. Even if it meant deciding who had the homeliest rooster in the region.
 

This column ran in the Prairie Post on May 18, 2010

Things were pretty busy in Medina a century ago.
First, it must have seemed like a cow town right out of the old west. A new ranch near Streeter, owned by a couple men by the name of Hall and Young was getting started. The ranch had taken over 10,000 acres from the DeLaney ranch and was looking to bring in cattle to stock.
Hall and Young took delivery of 1,500 head of cattle from Montana and had them shipped by rail to Medina. After the herd was off loaded there they were driven down to Streeter.
It must have seemed like a picture from the days of the great cattle drives from Texas 40 or 50 years earlier.
Even the Medina Citizen, the local newspaper, said it “gave us a glimpse of what would be doing in a regular cow town during the shipping season.”
A few weeks later there was another incident involving the railroad.
A circus train derailed and wrecked near there. While the newspaper reports don’t indicate any human casualties some of the show’s trick horses were killed outright and others injured.
But some of the biggest things that summer may have been happening a bit further west, or not.
R.M. Metcalf, the inventor of the Driscol Multiplane, claimed he was going to make a trial flight in July of 1910 at Driscol. Metcalf was passing through Jamestown in May of that year and told the editor of the Jamestown Alert all about his aircraft.
“As seen by the photos and drawings,” the Alert wrote. “The North Dakota airship consists of a series of large planes, cloth stretched over frames, propelled or pulled by three sets of large propellers, driven by a gasoline engine as in an automobile. The car is a boat shaped affair.”
And it would seem that the only thing that kept Driscol from being better known than Kitty Hawk was Metcalf’s forgetfulness. He claimed he invented the multiplane in 1876 but forgot about the design until the interest in aviation that followed the flight of Orville and Wilbur.
I read through the rest of the 1910 Alerts but didn’t find any further mention of the Driscol Multiplane. If it did fly they didn’t write about it in Jamestown.
So if anyone has some information on the flight of the Driscol Multiplane I would like to hear about it.
It would be interesting to know a bit more about the aircraft that slipped its inventor’s mind for 34 years.
 

This column ran in the May 12, edition of the Prairie Post

The community of Jamestown was in transition back in the spring of 1910. The town was changing and becoming more modern.
Some of those changes we probably still walk on today. The city ordered the replacement of some of the wooden boardwalks with cement sidewalks.
The city didn’t order all the boardwalks replaced, just those that were rotting away. The city also threatened to pour the concrete slabs themselves if the property owner didn’t do the work to their specifications.
The cost of those city-built sidewalks would go on the taxes of the property as a special assessment so maybe some things haven’t changed that much.
That same spring the Jamestown Board of Health ordered some of the buildings in the business district to demolish their “closets” or outhouses and be connected to the city’s sewer system.
I’m not quite sure why anyone would have to be ordered to have indoor plumbing.
Evidently there were some traditionalists who just didn’t want to see change.
The same meeting of the board of health also issued a reminder that spitting on “sidewalks or crossings of any street, alley or driveway” was illegal with a fine of $5 to $20. The ordinance also covered throwing garbage on the street or spitting inside any public building.
The public laws against spitting in public were generally an effort to limit the spread of tuberculosis.
But while Jamestown was making some steps towards being a little city on the prairie it still had some rural aspects.
On May 11, 1910 the Jamestown Board of Health decreed that anyone with a barn or stable in Jamestown must keep the premise clean and free of manure. The ordinance specified that all the manure had to be hauled out of town at least once a week. If you had a few horses and a couple of milk cows in town that could be a lot of manure to haul.
So it had to be a busy summer a century ago in Jamestown. Sidewalks were being built, plumbing was being installed and manure was being hauled.
And the cops were making sure no one spit on the sidewalks.
And in charge of the livestock regulations in Jamestown was a local veterinarian and livery stable owner. Dr. L’Moore actually held a significant position in the city even if his title didn’t sound terribly important. He was charged with making sure all the cattle and horses in town were healthy and had no communicable diseases.
In May of 1910 Dr. L’Moore, the father of world famous author Louis L’Amour, was appointed “cow inspector” for Jamestown.
 

Going through some 1912 Jamestown Alerts looking for story ideas for the Prairie Post column and noticed a couple of ads.

Evidently the Kill-Em-Quick gopher poison was a step up from the Let-Em-Die-Slow poison that had been used.

Don’t know what the Formeldahyde was for, maybe you preserved the little devils after you killed them quick.

This column ran in the May 6, edition of the Prairie Post

We’re going to celebrate an anniversary this week.
This month marks the 125th anniversary of the founding of the North Dakota State Hospital. Oddly enough, the facility used the term “North Dakota” four years before there was a State of North Dakota.
The territory created its second hospital for those with mental illness. The problems of breakdowns, alcoholism, drug abuse and violent insanity were common enough to require two places, one in Yankton and one in Jamestown, to house these people.
The modest facility started in 1885 grew for decades before contracting in the past years. Advances in pharmaceuticals mean people now take a pill for some of the conditions that would have resulted in them spending their lives weaving wicker furniture on the south hill decades back.
The State Hospital is also a major source of employment in Jamestown. Back in the 1920s it was such a major employer the city tried to get the state to fund a short line passenger rail line from downtown Jamestown to the State Hospital to make it easier for workers to get to and from their jobs.
And the State Hospital has a colorful history. One of its first patients was a survivor of the Battle of the Little Bighorn. Thousands of others came from all walks of life.
Some ended up in a kind of human storage. The technology and medical knowledge did not exist to cure their problems and their family had no way or desire to take them back in. Many lived out the rest of their lives at the State Hospital and are buried in one of Jamestown’s larger cemeteries south of the hospital campus.
The cemetery grew large because in that era the stigma of mental illness was such that few families claimed the bodies of those who died at the State Hospital.
The State Hospital is still important. It still houses some people from which society needs to be protected. And it houses some that need to be protected from themselves.
But with better technology and better understanding there are less people that fall into those categories. The reduction in patients has resulted in a corresponding reduction in the number of people who work at the State Hospital.
Check out the schedule of events at the State Hospital this week. Take the tour and see what they do. The museum is an excellent place to see what the past was like at that facility.
But you’re going to have to drive to get there, they never did get around to building that railroad to there.