Chahinkapa Park, in the northeastern part of Wahpeton, lies between the high banks of the old bed of the Red River and the present channel, its inviting woods cut off from the mainland by meandering lagoons. Improvements and recreational facilities (swimming pool, playgrounds, athletic field) by Federal agencies were completed under the Works Progress Administration (1937).
Wahpeton was the home of the late U. S. Senator Porter J. McCumber, who gained national recognition for his work on the Fordney-McCumber Tariff Bill.
The route leaves Wahpeton by way of 2nd St., and for 5 m. follows a winding course parallel to the Bois de Sioux. This portion of the highway runs over a trail used in 1823 by the military expedition of Maj. Stephen H. Long sent to establish the Canadian boundary, and still later as a freight route between St. Cloud, Minn., Fort Abercrombie, and Pembina in the 1860's and 1870's.
FAIRMOUNT, 247.5 m. (985 alt., 611 pop.), named for Fairmount Park in Philadelphia, Pa., was platted in 1887 until which time it was known as Michigan Settlement because many of its settlers came from that State. Of interest in the town is the widely known Sermon in Stone, an obelisk erected in St. Anthony's Roman Catholic churchyard by Rev. G. C. Bierens. Stones and ores, some semiprecious, have come from all parts of the world to be patterned into this bright-colored shrine. The Ten Commandments, Faith, Hope, and Charity, the Trinity, the Sacraments, and many other abstractions are symbolized in stone.
Father Bierens is an authority on bird life in the Red River Valley, and operates a U. S. Biological Survey Bird Banding Station (1937), one of the few in the State. Since he began the work in 1928 he has banded more than 10,000 birds, never less than 1,000 a year, and as many as 70 species in one season, not including field and shore or water birds. In April 1935 he banded the first European starling caught in North Dakota.
At the F. P. Nelson store in Fairmount is a Collection (open by arrangement) of Indian artifacts and of firearms, including a Chinese gun made in 1526.
Right from Fairmount on ND 11, a graveled road, is HANKINSON, 11 m. (1,068 alt., 1,400 pop.), named for R. H. Hankinson, town site owner. Here are the Convent and Academy of the Sisters of St. Francis, the mother house of the order in the United States. This order was established in Germany in 1241. The convent and academy, founded in 1927-29, are housed in a three-story Renaissance-style building of tapestry brick trimmed in Indiana limestone. In a niche over the entrance is a statue of St. Francis, carved in Danube limestone by the Joseph Mueller Art Institute of Munich, Germany, and donated to the order.
South of Fairmount the distant Coteau des Prairies is visible (R). Back in these hills, which form part of the watershed between the Gulf of Mexico and Hudson Bay, live the Sioux Indians of the Sisseton Reservation, a triangular section of which juts into the State from South Dakota.
At 256.5 m. US 81 crosses the North Dakota Line, 106 m. N. of Watertown, S. Dak. (see S. Dak. Tour 10).