Hey friends, welcome back to Grand Adventure!
I'm your host Marc Guido, and coming up on tonight's episode
we have brought our #AmericanHeartlandTour2020
to the surprisingly cool area surrounding Fargo, North Dakota,
so stay tuned!
With roughly 125,000 citizens, Fargo is the most populous city in North
Dakota, and accounts for nearly 17 percent of
the state's overall population. Founded in 1871 on the Red River
floodplain, Fargo is a cultural, retail, healthcare,
educational, and industrial center for eastern North Dakota
and northwestern Minnesota. The city is also home to North Dakota State University.
Fargo was an early stopping point for steamboats traversing the Red River
during the 1870s and 1880s.
It was originally named "Centralia" but was later renamed Fargo
after Northern Pacific Railway director and Wells Fargo Express company founder
William Fargo. The area started to flourish
after the arrival of the Northern Pacific Railroad, and the city became
known as the "Gateway to the West". Fargo today is thriving. Its low crime
rate, coupled with a decent supply of
affordable housing, has prompted Money Magazine to rank Fargo near the top of
its annual list of "America's Most Livable Cities"
throughout the late 1990s and early 2000s.
Zip Recruiter has named Fargo as the nation's number one hottest job market.
We didn't want to stay right in Fargo, so we're about 15 miles east
in the campground at Minnesota's Buffalo River State Park,
which protects one of the largest and highest quality prairie remnants in
Minnesota. The campground has 44 sites -- 35 with electric hookups -- plus
showers, flush toilets, and a dump station. Our
electrified site costs $32 per night,
although it's important to note that Minnesota State Parks also charge
a daily $7 vehicle entry fee in addition to the camping fee.
Buffalo River State Park was established in 1937
and developed by the Works Progress Administration.
Because much of its land was never cultivated, it's home to one of the
largest remnants of northern tall grasslands,
an ecoregion largely confined to the Red River Valley.
Along the Buffalo River itself, a gallery forest extends across the prairie along
both banks. There are 12 miles of hiking trails that
crisscross the park.
Buffalo River State Park sees high local use,
particularly for its unique swimming pool.
Here park officials fill a sand-bottomed depression with filtered water pumped in
from the river. The swimming hole is remaining closed in
2020, however.
Bonanzaville, the museum of the Cass County Historical Society,
is made up of 40 buildings on 12 acres on Fargo's west side,
any of them historic and from the region. These buildings have been moved
to the museum grounds and now form a village setting;
however, we arrived right as they were locking the gates for the day
two hours early due to inadequate staffing.
So instead we went to ... well, I'm not even going to try to pronounce it. Just look
at the screen. The museum is right across the Red River
from Fargo in Moorhead, Minnesota, and is operated by the
Historical and Cultural Society of Clay County.
The center's most notable permanent feature is a Viking ship
replica built by Moorhead resident Robert Asp in 1980.
Following his death four months after christening,
Asp's three sons and one daughter, along with a crew consisting of another eight,
sailed the ship from Duluth, Minnesota through the Great Lakes and across the
Atlantic to Oslo, Norway.
Also on the center grounds, the Hopperstad Stave Church
replica is a full-scale replica of a Norwegian stave church in
Vik, Norway that dates to the 12th century.
The church serves as a reminder of the Scandinavian heritage in the Red River Valley.
The Fargo Air Museum is located at Hector International Airport
in the northern part of the city. It includes many historic aircraft,
of which 90 percent are in flying condition. Aircraft on display
include a Douglas DC-3, a Fairchild PT-19 trainer,
a North American B-25 Mitchell bomber and a replica Wright Flyer.
However, any air museum that houses a North American
P-51D Mustang -- my favorite airplane of all time,
and the aircraft that changed the tide of World War II -- is going to make me stop to
look around.
So we truly hope you've enjoyed exploring the Fargo area as much as we
have! Coming up next week we're going to be
bringing our #AmericanHeartlandTour2020
further northwest in the state of North Dakota, so if you're not yet a
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