On ND 44 to the junction (R) with a graveled road, 36.5 m. In a triangle formed by the junction is a CRUCIFIX. On a base of natural boulders, in summer the clear, marble-like whiteness of the cross and canopied figure stands out in contrast with the green of the surrounding countryside.
At 50 m. is the junction with US 81 (see below).
HAMILTON, 24.5 m. (830 alt., 151 pop.), also a Canadian settlement, is named for Hamilton, Ont. The oldest State bank in North Dakota, organized in 1886, is operated here. The Pembina County Fair, established in 1894, is held here (June or July) each year. In Hamilton is the junction with ND 5 (see Tour 5).
In GLASSTON, 31.5 m. (843 alt., 70 pop.), named for Archibald Glass, first postmaster, and ST. THOMAS, 37 m. (846 alt., 595 pop.), named for St. Thomas, Ont., are the homes of many retired farmers. The latter is also a potato and sugar-beet shipping center.
AUBURN, 46.5 m. (848 alt., 50 pop.), was larger than its neighbor GRAFTON, 52.5 m. (833 alt., 3,136 pop.), until the latter became a railroad junction. Named by early settlers for Grafton County, N. H., Grafton is on the Park River in the center of a rich farming area. It was the first city in this part of the Northwest to maintain a municipal light plant, and had the first public library in North Dakota, established by a women's club in 1897. A Spanish-American War Memorial, one of the few in the State, is on the Walsh County Courthouse grounds. On a hill W. of the town is the Grafton State School for the feeble-minded. Opened in 1904, the institution in 1937 had 778 inmates and a faculty and staff of 110. The grounds, including the school farm, cover 20 acres.
Left from Grafton on ND 17, a graveled highway, to the junction with ND 18, 10 m.
Right on this highway 8.5 m. is HOOPLE, (901 alt., 325 pop.), one of the largest primary potato-shipping points in the State. More than a thousand carloads of Red River Valley potatoes are loaded here each year. The town is named for Allen Hoople, an early settler. U. S. Senator Lynn J. Frazier, former Governor of the State (1917-1921), lives on a farm NE. of here.
On ND 17 is PARK RIVER, 16.5 m. (1,000 alt., 1,131 pop.), on the Park River, probably named by early explorers for the buffalo parks along the stream. The Indians had no weapons which were effective on buffalo at long range, so they constructed corrals of brush into which the animals could be herded for killing. Whenever possible these corrals, which the first white explorers called buffalo parks, were built near the bank of a river or edge of a hill so that the buffalo would charge over the edge and be killed or badly injured in the crushing fall. The Walsh County Agricultural and Training School, secondary vocational institution, is located in the town. In Park River are offices of the South Branch Park River Project of the Soil Conservation Service, which has a demonstration area of 51,000 acres in central Walsh County on which contour farming and wind strip cropping are practiced. Sinclair Lewis, the novelist, owns a farm 1 m. S. of Park River, which he has never seen.
William Avery Rockefeller, father of John D. Rockefeller, the late oil magnate, lived on a Park River farm for some time. In 1881 an elderly man who gave his name as Dr. William Levingston homesteaded on a quarter section of land just E. of the town, where he lived each summer for 15 years. He later purchased an adjoining quarter, but the deed to this land was in the name of Pierson W. Briggs, a son-in-law of William Rockefeller and then purchasing agent for the Standard Oil Company. In 1895 George W. Towle, former Park River banker, who transacted much of Dr. Levingston's business, saw a picture of the senior Rockefeller in a copy of McClure's Magazine, and recognized it as that of his former client, Levingston. William A. Rockefeller was not a doctor, but sold patent medicines and acted as a cancer specialist.