First thing this morning we worked on our journal some then headed to the North Dakota state capitol building here in Bismarck, ND. When we originally saw the capitol building from a distance we were somewhat disappointed to see that it is a “modern” structure. The original capitol building, which had been the territorial capitol also, had burned down in 1930. The present 19 story capitol building was completed in 1934. We took a tour of the building and were quite impressed with the Senate and House Chambers area with their forty foot ceilings. The House of Representatives is especially noteworthy with walls of American Chestnut. The view from the 18th floor observation deck was grand and they had quite a few historic photographs lining the walls. Most of the 19 story part of the building is used for state offices and records.
After our tour we walked around on the ground for a while and then went to the North Dakota Heritage Center. We had not planned to see this but since we were walking by and it was a free facility we decided to step inside. We ended up spending the next couple of hours as it was a great museum and still we only skimmed some of the displays.
We had a late lunch of sandwiches and then went to the Former Governors Mansion State Historic Site. It is a Victorian style home built in 1884 and served as the governors mansion from 1893 to 1960. It was quite interesting to tour although it was obvious that the North Dakota governors did not live in quite the style of some other state governors.
Since we were still behind on our journal photographs and we had had a good van camping spot last night we decided to stay another night in Bismarck, ND. We worked on our photographs for a while, had supper at KFC, and then headed back to the Walmart where we again parked our van on the darker side to spend the night.
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