May is National Historic Preservation month and students in Dr. Jeff Wells’s HIST 310: History of North Dakota class at Dickinson State University (DSU) are helping area residents and visitors learn more about the history around them.
The students recently prepared thirteen new entries on local historic sites for Clio, a nonprofit educational website and mobile application.
Clio uses GPS information to guide the public to thousands of historical and cultural sites throughout the United States. It also features nature trails, art walking tours, and virtual tours of museums and sites. Built by scholars for public benefit, each entry includes a summary and useful information about a historical site, museum, monument, landmark, or other site of cultural or historical significance. Clio provides turn-by-turn directions for each entry and links to relevant books, articles, videos, primary sources, and credible websites.
“This is a terrific class activity because preparing a Clio entry requires students to engage in historical research, analysis, writing, and digital media,” said Wells, a professor of history and the Dennis and Vaune Johnson Endowed Chair in U.S. History. “Furthermore, I challenged the students to place what they learned about the site that researched into the overall context of the events in North Dakota history that we studied this semester.”
Before the class project, there were only four Dickinson entries on Clio. The students added eight new entries for the downtown area and five for the DSU campus.
The Dickinson Museum Center and the Dickinson Convention & Visitors Bureau helped the students gather information for their entries.
“Students creating more content featuring Dickinson’s local historic sites and stories for Clio will provide easy access to the story of our city for local history buffs, life-long residents and those new to our community,” said Bob Fuhrman, Dickinson Museum Center’s director and the city’s historic preservationist. “We should all be interested to see how today’s students look at our local history – what will the ’old’ stories look like to young eyes?”
Clio operates in an open digital environment. Users may add or improve existing entries. Wells said that this means that local history experts may add more entries to complement the work that students completed or organize the entries into driving, walking, or biking tours.
“The Dickinson Convention & Visitors Bureau welcomes many visitors to our region every year,” said Alicia Erickson, executive director of the Dickinson Convention & Visitors Bureau. “We are excited to be able to showcase another part of our city’s history by directing our visitors to check out these sites. We appreciate the work that Dr. Wells and his students have done.”
Existing Dickinson entries on Clio
Dickinson Area Public Library
Dickinson Museum Center
Dickinson Post Office
Stark County Courthouse
Entries prepared by Dr. Wells’s History of North Dakota class (Spring 2025)
Downtown
Dickinson Fire Station #1
Dickinson’s First School House
Elks Building
Independent Order of Odd Fellows
McDonald Block
Merchants National Bank
St. John’s Episcopal Church
Walton Block
DSU Campus
Klinefelter Hall
May Hall
Power Plant
Rock Wall and Alumni Gate
Stickney Hall