Upper Midwest: Gone to the Cities, Be Back Next Week

In the small local newspapers in the U.S. Northern Heartland, the phrases, “(so and so) is here from the Cities,” and “(so and so) is gone to the Cities,” have always been part of the language of the region. I was reminded of this when I recently was in that region and saw a sign on a store that echoed this.

Geographer John Borchert called this region the U.S. Northern Heartland, a region that is typically not in the vocabulary of Americans. Even those of us who have roots in the region would have a hard time naming the region—is it Midwest? Is it Great Plains? Is it Great Lakes? But the phrases related to coming and going from the Cities are recognized by everyone in the region and are the defining characteristic because this is a nodal region, a region that has a hub of circulation of people, products, communication, etc. in and out of the Twin Cities (TC) of Minneapolis/St. Paul.

Borchert mapped this circulation in his book on this Northern Heartland. He found the boundaries to stretch just a few hundred miles to the east of the TC before you encountered the pull of Chicago, but extended 900 miles to the northwest into Montana.  

I visited this region recently with a colleague, for both work and exploration. We spent time at the node—TC—and at some of the margins.

We started our journey in Fargo, North Dakota. OK, Fargo is associated with the Scandinavian-American accent that is heard in the movie, Fargo. The region comes by its accent from the heavy immigration from Scandinavia. And if the TC did not have a strong Scandinavian presence already, the movement of people from the Dakotas and elsewhere into the TC over time added to it. Alas, we did not hear much of the accent, but we did see the Red River Valley and the agricultural industry centered in Fargo. The Atlas of the Great Plains shows the ethnic origins however!

The Red River flows north from around the border of MN and SD through Fargo and Grand Forks and on through Winnipeg. North of Winnipeg it flows into Lake Winnipeg and eventually its waters find their way into Hudson Bay. The Red River Valley is a flat plain of former glacial Lake Agassiz, which covered most of Manitoba, and narrows at its southern end. This is one of the flattest surfaces anywhere in the US or Canada. I remember taking my daughters to visit a friend in Manitoba and driving south of Winnipeg and one looking around and saying, “I get it.  Big Sky.”

Fargo is an agricultural research center. John Deere has a research center here which is working on precision agriculture. The Red River Valley supports specialty crops of sugar beets and potatoes. The sugar beets are made into most of the sugar that we use. Also you find some corn on the eastern side of the state, but also sunflowers and wheat further to the west and north. I once visited a Mennonite colony in the rainforest of Bolivia and saw a large metal grain bin that came from Fargo. That sparks the imagination related to transportation routes and costs! Add to that, the Mennonites had ties to a community in the Red River Valley just south of Winnipeg.

From Fargo, we drove southeast to the TC via Interstate 94. This route is well-worn. At one point, in the mid-1800s, St. Paul was the railroad head from the east coast. The overland route from St. Paul to the Red River Valley and to Winnipeg was essential to the fur trade. Furs were collected from wintering stations and put in ox carts that took them to St. Paul. These furs were bound for Europe for the making of hats and other items. Today this route remains an important connection between the Winnipeg, the Red River Valley, and the TC. The Twin Cities remains the node of the region—international airport, professional sports teams, corporate headquarters, head of navigation on the Mississippi River.

From the TC we headed southwest toward Sioux Falls, SD through the beautiful valley of the Jolly Green Giant along the Minnesota River. This is the center of the vegetable canning industry. I have known many a college student in the past that would spend a season working in the canning factories. Leaving the Minnesota Valley, we go west, always following the rail line which connects the TC with Sioux Falls. Sioux Falls was originally a large milling center but today attracts credit card companies and other banking-related industry due to the tax-free status of the state and is also a regional medical center. We arrived just in time to join my cousin for a horseback ride.

My colleague and I spent a day in northwest Iowa, which was clearly cattle feedlot country, and then headed west from Sioux Falls with my cousin on the route that is well known to many American families who go on the great American roadtrip to sites such as Mt. Rushmore, Yellowstone Park, and the Grand Tetons. The first stop, as always, is the Mitchell Corn Palace! The original corn palace was built in 1892 with the present building finished in 1921. We got to see Dakota Wesleyan University students decorating the murals for the coming year. Each year brings new designs and new seasons of basketball games in the arena. In small rural towns, everything has to be multi-purpose.

As we went west in South Dakota, we rose in elevation and the climate becomes drier. The population density decreases and the landscape changes at the Missouri River where we leave most of the cropland behind and enter the range land of the west. East of the river is primarily a glacially formed landscape and west of the river is a stream-dissected landscape.

Soon we turned off the interstate highway and drove into Badlands National Park. Here the stream-eroded landscape is visible for all to see. The Badlands are the result of the uplift of sedimentary rock layers laid down by a shallow sea, along with volcanic ash, which have all eroded by streams flowing eastward from the Black Hills. We took two hikes in the Badlands. The landscape is so stark, with so little soil or vegetation that the first hike had yellow poles with numbers that were used to orient hikers and a sign to tell you when you are at the end of the hike. As we left the park, we encountered a herd of bison and tried to imagine the herds that once stretched to the horizon.

Wall Drug, in Wall, South Dakota, is on the edge of the Badlands National Park. The furthest I have seen a sign advertising Wall Drug is in downtown Amsterdam. The store, if you can call it that, was established in 1931, just as the U.S. started to have more and more tourists head west to see the country. Today it is a cultural icon which includes original western paintings, café, a variety of tourist shops, espresso bar, and drug store. We enjoyed looking at all the ranch brands along the edge of the cafe. Water is still free and coffee is 10 cents on an honor system.

We arrived in Rapid City, at the periphery of the Northern Heartland region, and the entryway to the Black Hills. The Black Hills are a geologic dome. Sedimentary rocks were laid down by a shallow sea, but about 1.6 billion years ago a mass of molten rock rose from deep within the earth's crust and formed the granite which is now the core of the Black Hills while the heat and pressure of the molten rock transformed the sedimentary into metamorphic rocks. The granite was eventually uncovered through the process of erosion. A National Park Service map shows a cross-section of the Black Hills with it different rock types.

We took two good hikes in the Custer State Park region in the southeast side of the Black Hills, visited Mt. Rushmore, and spent a good amount of time at the Crazy Horse Monument. The Crazy Horse Monument reminded us of the importance of the region to Native American culture, and of the history of displacement of indigenous peoples. I was impressed by the vision of the monument which is much broader than just the figure of Crazy Horse, which is still a work in progress. We also encountered some long horn cattle.

My cousin left us and my colleague and I had one more day. She had never been to Wyoming and I had always wanted to go to Devil’s Tower. We decided that we would go beyond end of the region and go around the north end of the Black Hills and into Wyoming for a hike around Devil’s Tower. Devil’s Tower is a volcanic feature that rises out of the surrounding grassland. It is made up of igneous rock that is a wonderful example of columnar jointing, the shape that is formed as this type of rock cools. The simplest explanation for Devils Tower is that it is a stock—a small intrusive body formed by magma. While cooled underground, it was then later exposed by erosion and was more resistant to erosion than the other rocks around it.

We had explored the edges and the center of the Northern Heartland. My colleague flew home from Rapid City and I got to take one more drive across South Dakota, admiring the wind turbines and the beautiful grasslands as I came to an end to my adventure.