Welcome to Dakota Territory
Here are some of the people who live and work in the Territory. These fourteen people are ready to visit with you about their lives in a time and place in history known as Dakota Territory. If this is your first time here, you can open the instructions below and learn the best way to travel through Dakota.
How to visit Dakota Territory
Pick a person, open their page, press Begin Visit, and talk naturally. You do not need fancy questions. Plain questions usually get the best answers.
Use the portrait, the name buttons, or the Friends page to choose who you want to meet.
Read the short introduction and look at the pictures so you know where that person lives or works.
Click Begin Visit on that person’s page. Then ask a question just like you were talking to a neighbor.
Click End Visit when you are finished, then choose another Friend or Host.
Detailed visitor instructions
- Welcome. This is a living Dakota Territory where you can speak with people of the 1860s through the 1880s and learn daily life through their own voices.
- The Friends are the heartbeat of the Territory. Each one speaks from lived experience — ranching, river travel, freighting, farming, medicine, gold, railroads, storekeeping, blacksmithing, banking, and more.
- The Historians are Harold and Carolyn. They can help you get oriented, explain the time period, and suggest who you may want to visit next.
- How to begin: choose one of the Friends or Hosts, open their page, and press Begin Visit.
- How to ask: use simple questions. Try things like “What is your work like today?”, “What do you eat?”, “What is hard about living here?”, or “Tell me about your home.”
- How to leave: press End Visit when you are finished. Then return to the Friends page or use the buttons to meet someone else.
- Good tip: each person knows their own life best. Ask Buck about ranching, Tink about riverboats, Ruth about frontier medicine, Angela about banking, Renae about the store, Samuel about prospecting, and so on.