The North Dakota Forest Trail That Holds A Long Forgotten Secret Of The Homesteading Days
By Leah|Published April 23, 2019
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Leah
Author
Leah moved to North Dakota when she was 12 years old and has traveled from the Red River Valley to the badlands and many places in between. She loves small-town life and currently enjoys living on a small farm in the ND prairie. She's always had a passion for writing and has participated in novel writing challenges such as NaNoWriMo multiple times. Her favorite part about this job is recognizing small businesses that deserve a boost and seeing the positive affect her articles can have on their traffic, especially in rural areas that might have otherwise gone overlooked.
Now that the weather is warming up, snow is melting, and ground is starting to dry, it’s a great opportunity to go explore the North Dakota outdoors. This particular state park has gorgeous trails that wind through forests and flower-filled meadows. Not only that, but you can also take the trails right to old homesteader farms from the pioneer days. This is an experience you’ll want to have. Check it out:
Head out to the serenity that is Fort Ransom State Park. This quiet place is nestled in the Sheyenne River Valley and is full of trees, gentle hills, and plenty of trails to enjoy it all.
Though mostly wooded, the parks trails also go through meadows, up ridges, and down across creeks. You never know what you might see while you're there.
One of the park's unique features that sets it apart from the other ND state parks is that it surrounds and preserves a historic homestead farm that you can reach on the forest trails.
There are two spots: the Sunne Farm and the Bjorn House. Each were the sites of old farms that have been kept up perfectly. You can even spend the night in the Bjorn House.
The farm is the site for the park's annual Sodbuster Days, an event that celebrates the homesteader history with live demonstrations of the way people lived and farmed back then.
It's an absolutely lovely spot to appreciate the beauty of the surrounding nature as well as the people who came to North Dakota and started a way of life here that still persists today.
You can visit the Sunne Farm and Bjorn House at Fort Ransom State Park, located at 5981 Walt Hjelle Parkway, Fort Ransom, ND 58033. For more information on the trails, reserving the Bjorn House, Sodbuster Days, and more, click here.
Though we can visit these old places to get a feel of what life was like back then, we can only truly get a glimpse of it through photographs. Discover some fascinating vintage photos of North Dakota back in the pioneer days.
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