NEWS for North Dakotans
Agriculture Communication, North Dakota State University
7 Morrill Hall, Fargo, ND 58105-5665

June 6, 1999

Tom Isern, Professor of History
North Dakota State University

©1998 Plains Folk

The Works Progress Administration is the best known of the employment programs of the New Deal of the 1930s. Millions of men and women fed their families from its payrolls, and we still read its initials, "WPA," on building cornerstones and bridge abutments across the country.

When we think of the WPA we think of high dams, stately courthouses, bricks and mortar, and earth. On the other hand, the workers of the WPA also produced works that were less concrete, but no less lasting.

For instance, the Federal Writers Project, a division of the WPA, produced the American Guide Series. Starving writers across the country were employed to research and write guidebooks to their respective states, intended both for motorists and for armchair travelers.

The writer's project in North Dakota was sponsored by the State Historical Society of North Dakota and directed by a woman named Ethel Schlasinger. Its contribution to the American Guide Series was "North Dakota: A Guide to the Northern Prairie State." When I arrived in North Dakota in 1992, a friend presented me with an original edition of the guide, published in 1938, which I treasure. You can get a paperback reprint (1990) of the WPA guide from the state historical society.

It's great for reading or browsing. The first part is devoted to topical essays on history, agriculture, industry, education, architecture and so on. These are fun to read because they sound so quaint. Scholars disdain the WPA guides as sources because they were written by journalists whose research was thin and whose writing was superficial, and...well, it was government work, after all. What the scholars forget is that whereas the WPA guides may be less than authoritative about the subjects treated, they are wonderful sources for what things were like in the 1930s.

For instance, consider the North Dakota guide's section on Racial Groups and Folkways. This is full of hokey stuff about the Dunkers and their bonnets, the Finns and their saunas, and bogus Indian legends. Consider the chapter more closely, however, and you find that the state's two largest ethnic groups, the Norwegians and the German-Russians, get roughly equal treatment, despite the social and economic dominance of the former. What accounts for this equity? Check out the original edition, and you find a foreword by William Langer. With "Wild Bill" as Governor, the German-Russians were sure to get equal time!

More interesting yet to me is the latter segment of the book, which lays out 10 tours (along with a number of side tours) for exploring the state. Tour No. 1, for instance, is a route up the Red River Valley, taking the explorer from Pembina to Wahpeton. Tour No. 5 traces the northern tier, Cavalier-Rolla-Belcourt-Dunseith-Bottineau-Mohall-Crosby. The 10 tours pretty well cover the state.

Reading these tours, the first thing you notice is that travel by auto in the 1930s was adventuresome. Pavement was scarce. Mileage and directions are detailed and careful, because it was darned easy to get lost.

The second thing you notice is that the local descriptions are full of interesting did-you-know type of items, such as—Did you know (see Side Tour No. 3B) that the Finnish community of Belden was the reddest town in the country? According to the guide, "The radical views and intensive political activity of these members of the community have earned it a reputation as the communistic center of North Dakota."

Or, did you know that Mose, N.D., population 30, was the police dog capital of the world, with its Ansonia kennels serving a "Nation-wide fad for German police dogs" in the 1920s?

I'm heading for the highway, WPA guide in hand.

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Source: Tom Isern (701) 231-8339

Editor: Dean Hulse (701) 231-6136