Minot, ND
Two miles north of Minot, owned by the city, currently the third-busiest airport in North Dakota. Northwest (later Delta) was the sole commercial carrier for decades; the Bakken oil boom in western ND brought a population surge and three additional airlines. Two runways, the longer (13/31 at 7,700ft concrete) rated to receive 747s. Minot Air Force Base — a B-52 wing — sits a few miles north. In July 2025, a SkyWest CRJ on approach here had to break off and circle to avoid a B-52 conducting a flypast for the state fair; both aircraft landed safely. Class D, with customs service supplying the "International" name.
A 178-mile-long reservoir on the Missouri River — the third-largest man-made lake in the US, named for the Lemhi Shoshone woman who guided Lewis & Clark through this country in 1804-05. The Garrison Dam (1953) created the lake; construction flooded the Fort Berthold Reservation lands of the Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara nations, who still live along its shores today. The lake is 14 miles wide at its widest, with 1,300 miles of shoreline — more coastline than California.
A 1,750-acre national historic site preserving the earth-lodge village remains of the Hidatsa and Mandan peoples, who farmed the Missouri-Knife River confluence for over 500 years. This is where Lewis & Clark wintered in 1804-05, and where they met Sakakawea — a teenage Lemhi Shoshone captive married to French-Canadian trapper Toussaint Charbonneau, who joined the expedition west the following spring. Circular depressions in the prairie still mark the foundations of dozens of communal earth lodges. Smallpox in 1837 devastated the villages; survivors moved north to what became Fort Berthold.
A 2,300-acre formal garden straddling the US-Canada border at Dunseith, ND / Boissevain, MB. Dedicated in 1932 to commemorate the longest unfortified international boundary in the world — the gardens are physically split between two countries, with formal beds, a chime carillon, a 9/11 memorial built from steel girders from the Twin Towers, and a peace chapel inscribed with quotations on both sides of the border. The line itself runs straight through the central reflecting pool. You can step from the US to Canada and back in three feet.
A 32-mile stretch of two-lane road from I-94 at Gladstone south to Regent, ND, lined with the largest scrap-metal sculptures in the world. Gary Greff, a former school principal with no welding or art experience, started building them in 1989 to keep his dying hometown alive. "Geese in Flight" at the north end stands 110 feet tall, 154 feet wide, and weighs 78 tons — the Guinness world record holder for largest scrap metal sculpture. Seven sculptures total: geese, deer, grasshoppers, pheasants, fish, Theodore Roosevelt on horseback, and the Tin Family. Greff still maintains them himself, in his seventies. Regent has fewer than 200 residents.