The Northern Great Plains, 1880-1920: Photographs from the Fred Hulstrand and F.A. Pazandak Photograph Collections
Critical Thinking
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[Detail] Likely taken by Job V. Harrison near Rock Lake, N.D. 190?
The Northern Great Plains, 1880-1920 affords students the opportunity to develop their skills in working with photographic historical documents on a variety of levels. And with these images, they can make in-depth explorations of historical subjects, devise questions and strategies for research, and consider controversial historical issues with a sense of their relevance to real past events and present conditions in America.
Chronological Thinking
Using the collection, students can trace change through time in a variety of subjects. They can follow the history of a town or settlement in images and trace the evidence of what settlers might have seen as progress. In one project, students can display a chronology of these images, concluding with a contemporary depiction of their topic, taken from magazines or newspapers, or drawn from imagination.
Other topics include landscape, architecture, clothing, transportation, leisure, and standard of living. An extended study of industrialization is also possible. Using the Special Presentation of "Implements Used on the Farm" and the Pazandak Special Presentations, and doing outside research on inventions, students can use the photographs to create a timeline of technology that changed the frontier.
