Long before North Dakota’s statehood, Indigenous people shaped the Northern Plains.
Along the banks of the Missouri River, Mandan and Hidatsa women crafted earth lodges from willow, grass and sod. With hoes made of bison bones, they tended vast fields of corn, squash and beans – the Three Sisters. These nutritious crops could be dried and stored, making them valuable for trade.
Though President Theodore Roosevelt called New York home, he was an intermittent North Dakotan. And he ate like one, too.
“The president lives very plainly. He prefers plain, wholesome food to the most elaborate menu,” the former White House chef Henry Benoit told The Lafayette Sunday Times in 1903.
One of his favorite dishes? A sirloin steak, potatoes and gravy. As a sportsman, he was also fond of all types of game, especially quail and venison. And, he had an affinity for his mother’s cooking. Relatable, right?
At the senior center in Hebron, 12 aging community members sit around a television. Caramel rolls and coffee, puzzles and magazines set on the table behind them. They follow exercise commands from an online video – some in light-hearted protest – then play along with “Wheel of Fortune” (the real reason they are there).
Kyla Sanders, the program coordinator for NDSU Extension’s Aging in Community Project in the western Morton County area, knows all of them and their stories by heart.
When Rebekah Engebretson talks about the meaning of homesteading, she keeps coming back to the same word.
“Simplicity,” she says. “That’s the word I go back to a lot.”
For her, homesteading isn’t about doing everything yourself. It’s about building a life that feels intentional.
In 2011, Rebekah and her husband, Dale, bought 20 acres with the hope of raising their four daughters in the country. The McKenzie Electric Cooperative members wanted wide-open space, room to grow and the chance to build a life that felt less overwhelming.
Sara Vollmer is living out her dream.
“You can’t not love the ranch,” she says.
The Leonard native met her husband, Troy Vollmer, while both were obtaining animal science degrees at North Dakota State University (NDSU).
“We both had the same advisor,” Sara recalls. “(The advisor) told Troy, ‘I’ve been to Wing, Troy. You best find a wife before you leave Fargo.”
Troy, it turns out, was a good student.
In her 46th year of teaching, Sharon Klein remembers the first computers incorporated into her curriculum and the introduction of the internet.
Now, artificial intelligence (AI) is streaming into her classroom.
When the English teacher first encountered ChatGPT in 2023, “cheating” was her first thought, but she has changed her mind.
The story of a professional chef in New York City moving to small-town North Dakota for love seems the perfect plot for a Hallmark Christmas movie.
Except it’s not so far-fetched for Sheri Shockman.
When Sheri joined an online dating service about 15 years ago, she was not looking for a relationship. Rather, she wanted to help a loved one who had fallen victim to an online scam.
“I went on (the online dating site) to find this scammer. Instead, I found my husband,” she says.
North Dakota’s new law banning student cellphone use in public schools took effect Aug. 1. North Dakota Living turned to students to ask their thoughts on the cellphone ban.
Each year, electric cooperatives from across the country sponsor high school sophomores and juniors to participate in the Electric Cooperative Youth Tour. The all-expense-paid trip to Washington, D.C., immerses students in the democratic process, teaches them about cooperatives and includes a full itinerary of monuments, museums and historic sites.
This fall, students returning to school will say goodbye to summer and their cellphones.
In April, Gov. Kelly Armstrong signed into law a bill banning student cellphone use in the state’s public schools.
The law requires cellphones to be secured during instructional time, from the start of the school day to dismissal, or “bell to bell.” It does not include school-owned devices such as laptops and tablets used for educational purposes, but covers a variety of personal devices, including smartwatches and tablets, that could distract students during the day.
Kennedy DeLap has a little more hardware to lug with her camera bag.
The Bismarck native and North Dakota Living photojournalist was crowned Miss North Dakota 2025 on June 7 at the Bakken Auditorium in Williston.
“They put the crown on my head, and I just couldn’t believe it,” DeLap says.
She fully expected to be at work the following Monday, editing photos and dicing through interviews from a recent assignment in Medora. But instead, she was being interviewed by the Williston Herald about her new job as Miss North Dakota.
