As of late, or at least since 2012, or even earlier, I have been thinking about the history of industrialization on the northern Great Plains. I have been encouraged this evening by reading Bill’s comments here, and also just by thinking about how steamboats were the first vestiges of 19th century industrialization, both locally, as noted in serious scholarship on the upper Missouri River, and globally, as expounded on by Maya Jasanoff at Harvard. Humanity has always needed and searched for energy sources. This has taken the form of wood and coal, which powered the early steam engines. This was all before petroleum was embraced and really took hold as thee major fuel source.

So when I look at, say, the September 8, 2014 front page issue of The New Rockford Transcript, and I see the “Central North Dakota Steam Threshers Reunion – September 19-21” 2014, I think of the transition by which humanity went from wood to coal. And how we used that coal to increase agricultural efficiency. And also how events like the central North Dakota Steam Threshers Reunion, or the Crosby Threshing Show, or the Braddock Threshing Bee, is and continues to remain central to our history and heritage. The New Rockford Transcript continues to be delivered to the house of my parents, a subscription my late grandmother Barth always enjoyed receiving (between this and the Emmons County Record). Here is that front page, at least the graphic. And if you want to order your own hard copy of The New Rockford Transcript or The Emmons County Record, just click on the previous two links to be directed to the specific contact.