Day 14, August 8. energize your life

Distance: 3.2 miles biking around Baker.

I want to get energized again, so what better place to do it than Baker, whose motto is "energize your life." I use the day to rest, to do blog work, and to visit the Fallon Historical Museum. Baker has about 1800 people. It is the county seat of Fallon County, whose population is about 3100.

Baker, the county seat for Fallon County, has a 1960s era county courthouse. The sign on the left is shown below.

The sign shows some significant aspects of Baker and the surrounding area.

Baker began with the coming of the Milwaukee Railroad in the early 1900s. It was named after a Milwaukee Railroad engineer. In 1908 railroad crews built a dam to trap water from the surface springs for steam engines. Baker Lake was formed.

Baker Lake in Baker, ND. Built by the Milwaukee Railroad.

In 1915 natural gas was discovered and few decades later oil technology developed so that the far deeper oil reerves could be tapped. Wikipedia quoted a 2014 Missoula newspaper article as follows, "a busy, noisy, traffic-jammed, bursting-at-the-seams boomtown on the edge of the oil fields." When I approached Baker from the west, I saw a huge volunteer fire department that seemed too large for a small town. Later I found out, of course, that this fire department is equipped to put out fires related to fossil fuel extraction.

The Baker, ND Volunteer Fire Department services the oil and gas industry.

I stayed at the Jackson Village Cabins. They are called cabins but they remind me more of the "small house" or "tiny house" movements. Each cabin is free standing and has a well equipped kitchen.

I believe that mostly energy and construction workers stay in the cabins.

Agriculture has remained important since the ranchers and homesteaders came more than 100 years ago. Wheat is the major crop and cattle the major livestock. A two-ton bovine is exhibited in the Fallon Historical Museum. My Roadside America app notes that Steer Montana was born in 1923 on a farm east of Baker. He grew to be nearly six feet tall, ten-foot-four inches long, and weighed nearly two tons. He is called the "World's Largest Steer," and he was at the time, but there was a larger one who died some years earlier.

Steer Montana weighed two tons, the largest steer in his day, at the Fallon County Historical Museum. 

Steer Monntana's skeleton, with a chair for scale.

The museum is very large, with thousands of items housed across five buildings. Roadside America says there is a two-headed calf, but I didn't see it. I did see a mannequin display of an early beauty shop permanent wave machine.

Permanent wave machine on display at the Fallon Historical Museum.

Meth is a concern in Baker.

Meth warning sign in Baker.

Fallon County doesn't have many people, but they do have a lot of community organizations (see below)

List of Fallon County community organizations.

Baker is up to date technologically. Cell phone reception is very strong, and the local grocery store has Apple Pay, a new fangled pay with your phone system.

I had a nice dinner at a restaurant named Lucky Chinese. The proprietress and I chatted a bit after the meal, and she gave me about 8 fortune cookies.