Tim Meyer is a Duluth architect and community builder. Reach him at tim.meyer@meyergroupduluth.com
When I told friends I was taking my son on a vacation to North Dakota, they predicted I would return with something to write about. They were right.
The primary purpose of our trip was a promise I had made to my son: a behind-the-scenes tour of the fossil preparation laboratory at the Badlands Dinosaur Museum in Dickinson. He is fascinated by dinosaurs, and this was going to be the highlight of the trip. What I did not expect was to encounter, from Fargo to Bismarck to the Badlands, a state investing so deliberately in its future.
North Dakota is too often dismissed as a place to drive through on the way to somewhere else. It is labeled an agricultural state, flyover country or Minnesota’s quieter neighbor to the west. Agriculture remains central to its identity and economy, but the old caricature no longer fits. North Dakota is building research facilities, expanding museums, revitalizing downtown districts and creating attractions capable of drawing visitors from across the country.
The evidence begins in Fargo, a city that will always hold a special place in my heart.
I attended North Dakota State University in the late 1980s after studying pre-engineering at St. Cloud State University. My experience in St. Cloud left me disappointed. It was a good school, but I encountered too much partying and not enough seriousness about higher education. NDSU was different. We still had fun, but students approached their education with purpose. There was a work ethic on campus that I carried into my profession, and the Bison alumni network remains strong decades later.
The Fargo I remember, however, is not the Fargo I encountered on this trip.
In my college years, downtown Fargo largely shut down after 5 p.m. The Old Broadway and Lauerman’s Pub were among the few dependable gathering places. There was little reason to stay downtown after the workday ended. Today, the district is active, attractive and filled with restaurants, housing, entertainment and public spaces. The Hotel Donaldson helped establish a new identity for downtown, while additional development, a new City Hall and an expanded public library reinforced the district’s resurgence.
North Dakota State contributed to that transformation by establishing a significant downtown presence, including programs in architecture, landscape architecture, visual arts and business. Students brought energy. Housing and hospitality followed. Downtown Fargo now has the foot traffic and activity that city leaders throughout the Midwest spend years trying to create.
The Broadway Square plaza is especially instructive. It is not merely decorative public space. Children use its splash pad. Families gather there. Events bring people downtown. The plaza demonstrates what can happen when a city creates a central place where people genuinely want to spend time. Cities searching for a downtown catalyst should study Fargo’s experience closely.
North Dakota State’s main campus tells a similar story. The A. Glenn Hill Center provides modern classrooms and laboratories for science, technology, engineering and mathematics, while the Richard Offerdahl ’65 Engineering Complex represents another major investment in engineering, computing and construction education. The new complex is scheduled to open to students in August.
These are not cosmetic projects. They are investments in a workforce being reshaped by artificial intelligence, robotics, advanced manufacturing and computer science. North Dakota State is preparing students for an economy that will require far more than the state’s traditional agricultural and energy strengths.
NDSU is no longer known nationally only for winning football championships, either. The university is expanding its academic and research ambitions while its football program moves into the Mountain West Conference and the NCAA’s Football Bowl Subdivision. Athletics may have helped place NDSU on the national map, but the university’s larger importance will be determined by what happens in its classrooms, laboratories and research facilities.
The growth extends far beyond campus. A visit to Scheels illustrates the scale of the Fargo metropolitan area’s development. The sporting-goods store is more like a regional destination than a traditional retailer, complete with an indoor Ferris wheel. West Fargo, once separated from Fargo by open fields, has become one of the state’s fastest-growing communities, while development continues south toward Horace and other former rural outposts.
Fargo has become a genuine destination, but the state’s forward movement does not end there.
In Bismarck, the North Dakota Capitol remains one of the region’s most distinctive public buildings. The original Capitol was destroyed by fire in 1930, and its replacement was completed in 1934. The 19-story Art Deco tower, often called the “Skyscraper on the Prairie,” is a striking departure from the domed, neoclassical buildings that house most state governments.
More important, it remains functional and approachable. Its House and Senate chambers continue to serve their original purposes, and the interior remains a powerful example of Art Deco design. In our region, only St. Paul City Hall offers a comparable expression of the style.
Nearby, the North Dakota Heritage Center and State Museum already presents the state’s history through exhibits on dinosaurs, Indigenous communities, early settlement and more recent generations. Now the center is undergoing another major expansion. A roughly 70,000-square-foot addition will include a military gallery, event space, expanded cafe and outdoor gathering areas. Completion is expected in 2027.
The military gallery also will provide an opportunity to explain North Dakota’s significant place in national defense, including the state’s long association with the Air Force, strategic bombers and intercontinental ballistic missile operations. That history is too important and complicated to be reduced to military hardware alone. Told properly, it can become one of the museum’s most consequential exhibits.
Western North Dakota offers an even more ambitious example of cultural investment.
The Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library opened July 4 near Medora, overlooking the Badlands that helped shape Roosevelt’s life. After the deaths of his wife and mother on the same day in 1884, Roosevelt came west to ranch, hunt and rebuild himself. He later credited his North Dakota years with preparing him for the presidency.
That connection makes Medora an appropriate home for the institution. The library is independent of the presidential library system administered by the National Archives and Records Administration, allowing it to focus broadly on Roosevelt’s life, leadership, writing and conservation legacy.
Designed by the international architectural firm Snøhetta, the building is intended to blend into the prairie rather than dominate it. Its grass-covered roof, outdoor trails and views of the Badlands make the landscape part of the visitor experience. That is fitting for a president who established the U.S. Forest Service and protected approximately 230 million acres of public land.
The library gives Medora and Theodore Roosevelt National Park another major attraction, but its importance extends beyond tourism. It represents a substantial investment in history, education, conservation and civic leadership. It asks visitors not only to study Roosevelt but to consider how the lessons of his life apply to the country’s future.
The most personal chapter of our trip came in Dickinson.
My son’s fascination with dinosaurs has been noticed by nearly everyone who knows him, including Duluth housing developer and property manager Greg Nisius, who shares much of that enthusiasm. Nisius arranged a behind-the-scenes fossil preparation laboratory tour through curator and paleontologist Denver Fowler and Amanda Hendrix, who oversees paleontology education and collections.
The experience was remarkable. We saw how scanning, three-dimensional modeling and geological analysis have changed paleontology. Technology allows researchers to document fossils, reconstruct missing pieces, produce detailed replicas and share discoveries with scientists and students far beyond Dickinson.
The Badlands Dinosaur Museum is not merely displaying the past. It is using modern science to study it.
The city of Dickinson has played a central role in the museum’s development, and another expansion is planned. The project calls for approximately 12,000 square feet of additional exhibit, laboratory, collection-storage and office space, along with renovations to existing areas. It will give researchers more room to prepare and preserve fossils while improving the experience for visitors.
That investment matters because the museum can become another anchor in North Dakota’s growing tourism economy. Fargo, Bismarck, Jamestown, Dickinson, Medora and the Badlands each offer something different, but together they form a credible statewide destination.
My friends were correct. I returned with a story about North Dakota, but it was not the story I expected to write.
North Dakota is not abandoning its agricultural heritage. It is building upon it. The state is pairing that identity with education, research, technology, history, conservation and tourism. It is preparing for the future through visible, measurable investments rather than slogans.
There is a lesson here for Minnesota and every Midwestern state trying to revive downtowns, strengthen universities and create reasons for young people to stay. Progress requires more than announcing a vision. It requires choosing priorities, committing resources and completing projects that people can see and use.
North Dakota spent generations being underestimated. It is answering those assumptions with action — and Minnesota should be paying attention.
