June/July Trip – Day #14 (More North Dakota)

Let’s start this post in New Town where there are one of the very few Jack & Jill Food Center signs left. These and similar signs were once all over Nebraska, Oklahoma, Iowa, North Dakota, and other states:

In Williston, this I Keating Furniture World store has two of these rooftop scaffold signs on opposite corners of their building:

This I Keating Furniture World in Minot has a globe sign on the corner. The motor box below indicates that it revolved originally. I’ve got globe signs and giant globes from all over the country at my website here:

https://www.roadarch.com/mim/globes.html

The Ten Spot Lanes sign is from Mandan. I recently moved all of the bowling signs to their own section at my website in order to have a nice companion section for an upcoming SCA article. You’ll find those pages here:

https://www.roadarch.com/sca/bowling.html

This modern sign is in Minot. There is a similar Vegas Motel sign in Williston but the motel itself has been demolished so the sign may not be around long.

Another sign from Minot:

From Garrison. “Drugs” at the bottom and the original business name on top have been covered up with those panels since at least 2008. This is one of the non-neon Rexall sign lit with lights overhead, presumably a cheaper choice with less maintenance:

A now closed Amoco station in Carson. This sign is probably from the 1970s (the company began using this logo in 1971):

This seemingly simple, rooftop oil derrick sign in Williston, formerly laced with neon (now LED tubing), may not look like much:

But it’s actually what I believe is the sole-surviving example of the mass-produced Mid-Continent Supply Co. signs built for all of their locations in the 1940s & 1950s. From the descriptions I’ve read, the neon gushing oil at the top was animated. Here’s a vintage photo from 1942 in Odessa, TX:

http://www.davickservices.com/oil_well_supply_company_odessa,_tx_1942.htm

Shreveport, LA (from the LOC site):

https://www.loc.gov/resource/mrg.04329/

and Plainville, KS:

https://www.facebook.com/Prairieheritage1001/posts/tbt-this-building-on-the-corner-of-k-18-and-section-line-was-a-real-showplace-in/1971494139629369/?_rdr

Moving on to some statues. This 19-foot-tall statue of Earl Bunyon [sic], Paul Bunyan’s brother, in New Town is being restored. It was built in 1958 and here’s a vintage postcard photo. He originally held a fishing pole and later a branding iron in his left hand:

and today:

These 12-foot-tall steel sculptures of explorers Lewis & Clark and the Mandan Indian Chief were installed in Washburn at the Lewis & Clark Interpretive Center in 2004:

I brake for Statue of Liberty statues, no matter how big, small, or ugly. I like the jumbo streetlight torch on this one in Williston. If you’d like to see the “collection,” they are at my website here:

https://www.roadarch.com/giants/women2.html

I also brake for windmills and lighthouses — with preference for the fake ones. This windmill in Minot was previously located in Powers Lake. It was built in 1928 and was used as a real one then. For more windmills, I’ve got five full pages of them here:

https://www.roadarch.com/mim/wind.html

How about a few buildings to close this post? The Thompson Apartments building in Minot was built in 1948:

This Art Deco building in Mohall was built from 1936-1937:

And lastly, one of my fave buildings in North Dakota: the Northern National Life Insurance Building from 1965 in Bismarck. Sorry for the “golden hour” shadows: