Bonanzaville, USA

Bonanzaville, USA is a history museum complex in West Fargo, North Dakota. Bonanzaville, the museum of the Cass County Historical Society, is made up of forty buildings on 12 acres (49,000 m2), many of them are historic and from the region. These buildings have been moved to the museum grounds and now form a village setting. Most of the buildings have a special theme. Displays include a prairie church, a general store, a drug store, a fire station, Fargo's first house, and a schoolhouse. There are also several newer buildings which have been constructed on the grounds including an aircraft museum and an automobile museum.

Bonanzaville, USA
LocationWest Fargo, North Dakota, United States
Coordinates46°52′34″N 96°55′41″W
Websitewww.bonanzaville.org
 

Other exhibits include horse-drawn vehicles, firefighting vehicles and equipment, medical and dental equipment, a law enforcement museum, a telephone museum, and a newspaper printing press. Bonanzaville has several hundred thousand artifacts in their collections and on display.

Location and events

Bonanzaville is located just off of Interstate 94 (Exit 343) and about two and a half miles (4 km) west of the city of Fargo, North Dakota. The complex is open from May through September, but event venues are open year-round. The highlight of the museum's year is the annual "Pioneer Days", the largest and longest-running annual event in the Fargo–Moorhead area. The event is held the third weekend of August. Other popular events include the July 4 Celebration, Ghost Tours, Paranormal Investigations, and Christmas on the Prairie. In November 2018, the producers of Antiques Roadshow announced that the historical television show was planning to film at Bonanzaville in June 2019.[1][2]

Exhibits

An exhibit on the Jewish experience in North Dakota opened in 2017.[3] The North Dakota State University Fargo History Project prepared an exhibit on the Spanish–American War that opened in 2019.[4][5]

Telephone Pioneers Museum

The telephone museum was a hardware store donated by Oscar Loken of Tower City and converted by US WEST Telephone Pioneers.[6] The exhibits show telecommunications devices, such as receivers, switching equipment, and glass or porcelain line insulators. Many of the telephone equipment was from the local service area of Northwestern Bell Telephone Company. Old and new type cable were removed from Fargo in 1978 and are on display.[7]

The Telephone Pioneers maintain the telephone equipment which allows calls to be made from one building to another.[8]

There are various telephony related items in the museum.

Flooding

A spill of 200,000 US gallons (760,000 L) of water flooded Bonanzaville in January 2019.[9][10][11][12]

References
  1. Wendy Reuer (November 12, 2018). "'Antiques Roadshow' coming to Bonanzaville". West Fargo Pioneer. Retrieved 2019-05-20.
  2. "West Fargo, ND". PBS. Retrieved 2019-05-20.
  3. Tenorio, Rich (October 15, 2017). "Frontier Jews find more 'Green Acres' than Goldene Medina in rural Dakota". The Times of Israel. Retrieved 2019-05-20.
  4. "Bonanzaville Spanish-American War exhibit to feature NDSU student". West Fargo Pioneer. 2019-05-09. Archived from the original on 2019-05-09. Retrieved 2019-05-20.
  5. "Spanish-American War exhibit at Bonanzaville". INFORUM. April 18, 2019. Retrieved 2019-05-20.
  6. "Telephone Pioneers Museum - Bonanzaville Full Village Tour - PocketSights".
  7. "Pioneer Village".
  8. "Bonanzaville, USA".
  9. Reuer, Wendy (2019-01-08). ""It's heartbreaking.' Vandalism causes flooding at Bonanzaville..." West Fargo Pioneer. Archived from the original on 2019-02-03. Retrieved 2019-05-20.
  10. "Contractors remove ice caused by vandals at Bonanzaville". The Mighty 790 KFGO. Retrieved 2019-05-20.
  11. Service, Wendy Reuer Forum News. "Vandals flood grounds of historic Bonanzaville". Bismarck Tribune. Retrieved 2019-05-20.
  12. Peguero, Joshua. "Bonanzaville pushes back against sheriff's investigation on alleged vandalism". www.valleynewslive.com. Retrieved 2019-05-20.
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