Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 26.djvu/337



With its "Upper Missouri Historical Expedition" the Great Northern Railway Company began a challenge to the American public to make its travel more stimulative to higher interests and also with this enterprise this railway corporation makes a continuing appeal to the communities along its route to cooperate in exploring the wealth of cultural background of their home regions. To serve as an enduring means for kindling this new historical consciousness among the Great Northern patrons, monuments were with fitting ceremonies dedicated on the historic sites along its route in North Dakota and Montana during a July week.

The "Upper Missouri Special," starting from St. Paul on the evening of July 16, bore northwestward President Budd and his co-workers in this enterprise along with representatives from the historical societies of the Missouri Valley states and historians who had made special studies of the exploration and early trading activities in this region. At Verendrye, a small town a little to the northwest of the center of North Dakota, the expedition was joined by a small delegation that had come eastward from the Pacific coast. This town (formerly Falsen) on the Mouse River, a tributary to the Assiniboine flowing into Lake Winnipeg, had been renamed "Verendrye" to commemorate the fact that up the water course on its border Verendrye had proceeded in the interest of France in 1738, intent on visiting the Mandans from whom he would get aid towards consummating his long cherished project of crossing the continent to the Pacific. Fifty-nine years later, in 1797, up this same stream came David Thompson as the geographer or exploring agent of the British Northwest Fur Company. To commemorate the achievements of Thompson, whose indefatigable explorations for the most accurate mapping of this belt of the