North Dakota’s First Post Office Was Established In 1855

We are heading out on a road trip today with this post. I recently found an extremely informative website about some interesting historical dates for North Dakota. It was January 26, 1855, when the post office was established at St. Joseph (now Walhalla) with Charles Grant as postmaster. According to the North Dakota State Historical Society, this was the first post office in what became Dakota Territory.

googlemaps.com

Walhalla Post Office

The town of Walhalla was founded in 1845. The Red River Valley's fur trade had a significant role in the history of Walhalla, the second-oldest town in North Dakota. The North West Company fur trading post, founded in 1797 by British-Canadian surveyor and geographer David Thompson (1770-1857), was one mile northeast of the town. In 1801 it was relocated to a location one mile east of Walhalla, where a reconstructed building is presently found. The Great Northern Railway arrived in Walhalla in 1898.

October 2016 proved to be interesting for the town, state, and even the nation. The producer of the documentary "How to Let Go of the World and Love All Things Climate Can't Change," Deia Schlosberg, was jailed while documenting a demonstration in Walhalla, against TransCanada's Keystone Pipeline. For almost seven hours, activists from the organization Climate Direct Action who were present shut down the pipeline that transports oil from Canadian tar sands to the United States. Michael Foster and Samuel Jessup, two of the protesters, were also charged, and Schlosberg's tools and video documentation of the event were taken away.

This is more proof that there are some neat and unique things that have happened in the state of North Dakota!