DISPATCHES FROM THE ROAD

Nuking the Rocky Mountains

Clay and two colleagues met near the town of Rifle in western Colorado to visit the spot where the federal government set off a nuclear device in 1969 to test the feasibility of using atomic bombs in oil “fracking.”
Tagged under: ,
Sand Creek Massacre sign
Clay drives into eastern Colorado to spend time at the site of the 1864 Sand Creek Massacre and then to Denver to see an exhibit on the tragic event at the History Colorado Center. .
Crazy Horse memorial
Leaving South Dakota, I drove south to Fort Robinson in Nebraska, the site where the great Oglala leader Crazy Horse died. He was killed unnecessarily on September 5, 1877, at about 33.
Tagged under: ,
Jackalope
On Clay’s third day from Bismarck to Vail, he travels through Wall, South Dakota and visits the U.S. National Grasslands Visitor Center and Badlands National Park.
Minuteman Missle sign
I spent the day with three extraordinary men at the Minuteman Missile National Historic Site learning the “on the ground” operations of Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles during the Cold War.
Hamlin Garland, 1860 -1940. Image - National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution.
As I continued my drive and not far into South Dakota, I visited the homestead of the Pulitzer Prize winning author Hamlin Garland.
Tagged under: , ,
On July 4, 1942 a monument was dedicated to the Native Americans who fought and died at Whitestone Hill. This is thought to be the first monument in the United States dedicated to the honor of Indians who fought and died in a battle. North Dakota State Historical Society.
My first stop was the lonely Whitestone Hill, a grass hill in south central, North Dakota. It is the site of the bloodiest battle in North Dakota history in 1863.
I sat in the theater Friday for three hours and was mesmerized. The film is historically accurate. Oppenheimer is one of the best movies I have ever seen.
Tagged under: ,
You cannot think about the Lewis and Clark story without trying to come to terms with Sacagawea. She is the most statued woman in American history. And she is one of the two most prominent Native American women in American memory. And yet, to borrow Winston Churchill’s famous description of the Soviet Union, “she is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma.”
A short video I recorded recently on the campus of my alma mater, the University of Minnesota. I was a student there in the early 1970s and after class I often found myself at the base of Northrup Auditorium, incised with what I still regard as the perfect mission statement.
Tagged under: ,