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The Victoria

GAZETTE

Spring Break in Peaceful Valley

by Sue Orsen

         People looked funny at me when I told them we were going to North Dakota for Spring Break this year.        

         Families and individuals in the Cold Country, which naturally includes the Victoria community, most often head south for Spring Break.  Friends talk about walking the sandy beaches of Bonita Springs, Florida; playing golf at Palm Springs, California; or filling slots at Las Vegas, Nevada.  Others enjoy sunny villages in Arizona and New Mexico.  Some of my family members talk about golf at Alamo, Texas, with jaunts south of the Rio Grande and fresh shrimp at South Padre Island.

         Nobody talks about spending Spring Break in North Dakota.  It’s probably never been done before except for the natives.  The average Cold Country Citizen wouldn’t consider this as a destination, unless they had children living there, since it’s colder and windier and snowier than much of Minnesota.  But Tioga, which is the Iroquois Indian name for Peaceful Valley, is a small town in the western part of North Dakota that continues to beckon us because our daughter and family have come to live there.

         Through these kids and their relatively new environs, and because of our own excursions to this western side of North Dakota, we are gradually becoming educated about Minnesota’s next door neighbor.  As I’ve said before, the territory was previously foreign to us.

         It’s relevant to pass on a little of what I’ve already learned, not just because it’s interesting but because it could play, and is already playing, an important role on the national scene. 

         Hope you enjoy my array of photographs within these first few pages of this Gazette as well as the information I’ve gleaned over these past 18 months or so.  I had never imagined that the terrain of North Dakota was anything but flat and rather barren.  Lo and behold, much of it is not flat and it is definitely not barren.  Tioga is the Oil Capital of North Dakota and it is positioned to become much more.

         I could go on and on about our 2010 Spring Break in Tioga, North Dakota, and all the stories I heard and read, but I’ll try to keep it short and to the point.  Click here to continue Spring Break.

April 2010

Chris Norgaard, our son in law who is the project manager for

C & G Construction, a company that lays oil pipeline, took us on a tour of the Tioga countryside in March 2010.  This western part of the state is hilly and contains fossil fuels, ignite coal, and crude oil.

The Missouri River flows through the western part of ND and forms Lake Sakakawea behind the Garrison Dam.  You can see the plowed out spot where our kids had a big ice-house this winter and caught nice walleyes.