What properties in North Dakota are listed in the National Register of Historic Places?
The Well House, Wells Co.
Photo by Brian Austin
At this time, the North Dakota State Historic Preservation Office does not have an online, searchable database of listed properties. The National Park Service maintains the National Register Information System (NRIS), which can be accessed here: http://www.nr.nps.gov/.
For a basic search:
- Click on “Name”
- At the next menu, click on “State and Resource Name”
- Enter “ND” as the state code
- For all properties listed in North Dakota, leave the “Resource Name” field blank
- To search for a specific site, enter one part of the resource name. For example, enter “bridge” to search for Sorlie Bridge in Grand Forks, or enter “Mansion” to search for the Former Governor’s Mansion (officially known as the Former Executive Mansion), in Bismarck
For more information on a specific site:
- Click on “Name”
- At the next menu, click on “State and Name with Database Details”
- Enter “ND” as the state code
- Enter one part of the resource name
For now, resources that are within a listed historic district are not searchable. If you believe your property is located within an historic district, and you have questions regarding its status, please call the Historic Preservation Division at 701.328.2089. Please have the property's street address at hand.
North Dakota properties listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 2006
Odalen, photo by Ethnoscience
Listed: 11 January 2006
The Odalen Lutherske Kirke (Lutheran Church) is significant for its association with the Norwegian immigrants from the Odalen district of Norway. The immigrants settled this area in rural Walsh County, and established the congregation in 1884. 1897 is significant as the year the church was constructed, thus beginning its function as a religious and social gathering place for the Norwegian community. The site, in particular, was chosen because it reminded the settlers of their homeland. The Odalen Church has been a locus of that distinct cultural identity because of its role in perpetuating the social and religious traditions of this immigrant group. The church was the social gathering spot, at which ethnic foods were served and Norwegian was spoken. The Odalen Church is the last remaining community building in Tiber township constructed by the original immigrant group. The property meets criteria consideration A because its primary significance lies in its role in the early settlement history of Walsh County, and in maintaining the ethnic identity of the Norwegian immigrant community.
Ridge Trail Historic District. Photo by Michael Madson
Listed: 17 March 2006
The collective trail segments comprising the Ridge Trail Historic District together represent one of the most important events in the history of the old “Northwest,” associated with a pattern of events that brought together Métis cart drivers, Dakota and Ojibwa tribal groups, English and French Traders, and Euroamerican settlers and politicians to the 19th century landscape of northeastern North Dakota. That event, the opening and utilization of commercial and personal travel routes between Selkirk, Manitoba and St. Paul, Minnesota, utilizing wooden carts as the primary method of conveyance, produced trails across central and western Minnesota, northeastern North Dakota, and southern Manitoba. The remaining segments of the Ridge Trail Historic District represent the trails that were initially used for the fur trade and were instrumental in ending the Hudson Bay Company’s monopoly over the commerce of the Red River Region . The oxcart trails became the major transportation system by which commerce and people were moved throughout most of the 19th century.
These segments are tangible evidence from which the story of the development, utilization, and decline of the oxcart transportation system can be richly illustrated. An understanding of the effort required to travel between St. Paul and the Red River region, as documented in period written accounts and photographs, is made richer when one views one of the existing segments of the Ridge Trail system in Walsh or Pembina County.
St. Catherine’s Church of Lomice.
Photo by Ethnoscience.
Listed: 12 April 2006
St. Catherine's, a fieldstone Gothic Revival church in rural Walsh County, is significant both for its history and for its architecture. The church construction began in 1936 and was completed in 1938. It was the first project funded by the Catholic Church Expansion Fund, a landmark innovation in rural Catholic parish economics in the United States; the funding mechanism is still in use today. This mostly Czechoslovakian parish came together for an unusually high level of parishioner participation in the construction of the church. The site features the church building, as well as a churchyard grotto with statuary niches. St. Catherine's Church remains one of the most architecturally distinct and historically significant buildings in Walsh County. This building and its story exemplify the connection between architecture and history.
South Prairie Community Hall,
photo by Lorraine Smith.
Listed: 7 June 2006
In the early 1920s and for about 50 years thereafter, there were five local township and community halls in the rural areas south of Minot, Ward County, North Dakota. The South Prairie Community Hall, a wood-framed stucco structure, is the last one still in existence. The hall was built between 1920 and 1922 by the South Prairie Community Club. It was originally called the Clubhouse. All club activities were held there. Nearly everyone in the community was a member. The designer of the building is unknown. A building committee organized the volunteer labor that constructed the majority of the hall. Some materials were donated, as well, and the project was popular amoug community memebers. The large open area of the community center lent itself well to many uses.
It is eligible for listing in the National Register of Historic Places under criterion A, for its importance to the social history of this farming area, as well as being representative of a type of building that typifies agricultural recreation in the first half of the twentieth century.
Fred and Gladys Grady House,
Oliver and Gertrude Lundquist House.
Photo by Michelle Dennis.
Listed: 21 July 2006
The Fred and Gladys Grad House (414 East Avenue F) and the Oliver and Gertrude Lundquist House (622 West Thayer Street), both in Bismarck, were listed in the National Register of Historic Places on 21 July 2006. Both houses were built under the auspices of the NonPartisan League’s Home Building Association and listed with a Multiple Property Submission context statement that discusses the history of this program; this context statement will allow other houses identified as NPL houses to be nominated through the context. Both houses are private dwellings today.
The law creating the Home Building Association was part of the 1919 NPL platform. It was passed as: “An act declaring the purpose of the State of North Dakota to engage in the enterprise of providing homes for residents of this state and to that end to establish a business system operated by the state under the name of the Home Building Association of North Dakota.” For a down payment of 20%, and a membership in a local Home Buyers’ League, the state would construct affordable homes (up to $5,000 for houses in town, $10,000 for farm dwellings). The state was to undertake the building of houses, thereby saving on costs associated with contractors and retail building material dealers. The program’s objective was to promote economic security by assisting persons in the low- and middle-income groups to become owners of their own homes. The NPL’s Home Buyer’s League was dissolved in 1923.
In a 1921 report, there were twelve Home Buyers’ Leagues listed with a total of 164 members. There were two leagues in Bismarck, two leagues in Fargo, as well as one each in Driscoll, Hazen, McGregor, Merricourt, Minot, Mandan, New Rockford, and Underwood. The 1921 report also listed houses under construction, including 18 in Bismarck, 25 in Fargo, 7 in Mandan, 2 houses in Underwood and a barn at Coleharbor. Only houses in Bismarck and Fargo are known to be extant at this time. These two houses are intact, Craftsman bungalow dwellings featuring fine craftsmanship. This is typical of the majority of houses known to be constructed by the Home Building Association.
Old Main, North Dakota School of Forestry.
Photo by Jim Steely.
Listed: 1 September 2006
The North Dakota School of Forestry’s 1907–1908 Old Main Building, now part of Minot State University–Bottineau, embodies rich legacies of higher education, statewide conservation, symbolic design, and sturdy workmanship.
The new state’s Constitution of 1889, aspiring to fulfill legislative duties of education as well as service to its primarily agricultural citizenry, called for a School of Forestry to research and propagate trees for homesteaders' fuel, lumber, and wind breaks. Bottineau, a county seat and regional grain market in north central North Dakota, won the school’s designation in 1894, and the town provided the first frame classroom building in 1906.
The state appropriated $25,000 in 1907, hired regional architect Joseph Shannon and experienced contractor Edmund White, and ensured completion of the forestry school’s permanent Main Building in the fall of 1908. While an exclusive “forestry school” proved to be an extravagance for the sparsely populated, prairie farming state, the school soon evolved into a successful regional college while retaining an emphasis on forestry. As its campus grew to several buildings by the 1940s, its distinctive 1908 edifice came to be called “Old Main” by students, faculty, and graduates, and its neighbors in Bottineau.
After almost a century of service to the state, region, and community, the building is of state-wide significance for its place in the history of conservation and education, and the state government’s role in both. It is also significant for its late Romanesque Revival design, and as the enduring architectural symbol of the university branch, celebrating its Centennial in 2006.