Left from the town on a graveled road to the junction with a county dirt road, 3 m.; L. here to a gate (L) at 4.3 m.; follow rutted trail to foot of southern slope of SENTINEL BUTTE, 5 m. In a pass at the top of this slope are two supposed graves of sentinels killed while on guard. Conflicting stories are told of the sentinels' identity. One Indian legend says romance was involved in the slaying of the two; another, that they were Arikara scouts surprised by a Sioux war party. Nearly 80 acres of grassland are on the flat top of Sentinel Butte, and its precipitous sandstone cliff-sides rise 719 ft. above the surrounding prairies. From the eastern rim of the butte on a clear day is a panorama of the Badlands, with Flat Top Butte in the foreground, and the diggings of several private lignite coal mines visible in the slopes of the neighboring hills. To the S. and W. the plain stretches away into the distance: nicely squared patches of green in the spring and early summer, rippling areas of gold during harvest, and squares of plowed black earth etched against patches of grimy yellow stubble in the fall.
BEACH, 365.5 m. (2,755 alt., 1,263 pop.), is named for Capt. Warren Beach of the Eleventh Infantry, who accompanied the Stanley railroad survey expedition in 1873. Beach is Golden Valley County seat, center of a large agricultural area in western North Dakota and eastern Montana, and a grain shipping point. John M. Baer, the political cartoonist, was postmaster in Beach from 1913 to 1915, and later became a North Dakota Congressman.
US 10 crosses the Montana Line, 368 m., 42 m. E. of Glendive Mont. (see Mont. Tour 1).
SIDE TOUR 8A
Valley City—Oakes—South Dakota Line. ND 1.
Valley City to South Dakota Line, 75 m.
N. P. Ry. branch line roughly parallels route between Verona and Oakes, North Western Ry. branch between Oakes and South Dakota Line.
Gravelled roadbed throughout.
Accommodations in principal towns
ND 1 south of Valley City traverses the rolling plain—part of the Height of Land—that lies between the Sheyenne and the James Rivers. The northern end of the route runs near the Sheyenne, while its southern course roughly parallels the James. Near the southern border of the State the highway runs across the level bed of glacial Lake Dakota, a small part of which extended into present North Dakota. This lake existed before Lake Agassiz, in the valley of the James River, which was in existence before the second ice age. Along the entire route pheasants are plentiful.