Furious at the distant banks and grain buyers who set their fortunes, plains farmers rose up in a political movement so sweeping it built a state bank and a state-owned mill that stand today.

Germans who had farmed the Russian steppe brought their hard winter wheat and their steppe-tested skills to the plains, settling the central counties in enduring numbers.

Drawn by cheap land and the promise of a new start, tens of thousands of Norwegian immigrants settled the plains, planting a Scandinavian culture that flavors the region still.

With no timber for miles, the first homesteaders cut the tough prairie sod itself into bricks and built their houses from the very ground they had come to farm.

Each October, one of the continent's largest Scandinavian festivals fills Minot with the food, music and craft of the old countries, a joyous reunion of the plains' Nordic heritage.

In the wheat frenzy of the late nineteenth century, vast corporate 'bonanza' farms spread across the Red River Valley, worked by armies of hired hands and steam machinery.