The Northern Great Plains, 1880-1920

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• Learn more about American history, biographies, farming, museum education, photography, visual learners, and women.

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The Northern Great Plains, 1880 - 1920 contains the collections of two photographers of the time, Fred Hulstrand and F.A. Pazandak.

The content of the Fred Hultstrand Collection, ranging from early sod homes, to farming scenes, to small town life, to social events, and to education on the prairie. Subject strengths include: sod buildings, farming, one-room schools, women, children, and stores & shops in small town America. There are images of plowing, threshing, steam engines, and horses. Weather, always a major concern, includes blizzards, snow, and winter. Other images contain scenes of eating & drinking, hunting, celebrations, and women’s organizations. The ethnic diversity of the region is evident with the numerous images of Norwegian Americans, Icelandic Americans, Canadian Americans, British Americans, and others. Through this collection visitors will witness the transformation of a part of the American frontier in the short span of forty years, from the early 1880s to the 1920s.

The F.A. Pazandak Photograph Collection includes 119 images taken by him in the early twentieth century on the family farm near Fullerton, in southeastern North Dakota. F.A. Pazandak, a North Dakota farmer, developed an early interest in photography, a fortunate development for us today. He not only participated in the transition from horses to steam engines to gas tractors, but recorded that transition through the eye of his camera, thus capturing forever an important part of American agricultural history. Although the subject content is narrow, it is the concentration of closely related images in a relatively short time span which makes it such an interesting collection. Subject strengths include plowing, disking, seeding, binding grain, threshing, and the machinery used for these operations-steam engines and tractors. There are also images of the agricultural laborers who worked the fields, and several social scenes of the family. Even the Sears, Roebuck and Company prefabricated house Pazandak built for his new bride is documented. Through this collection users will witness the mechanization of American farming in the early twentieth century.