Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
If you didn't get enough of Lewis and Clark during their recent bicentennial cel-
ebration, you're in luck. There's another volunteer opportunity in North Dakota at
Fort Mandan, the historic North Dakota wintering ground for the intrepid explorers
in 1804-05. It was at the Mandan-Hidatsa Indian village (now called Fort Mandan)
that Lewis and Clerk met Sacagawea, the Native American woman who made their
historic journey possible. During their five months in North Dakota, longer than
they stayed anywhere, Lewis and Clark interviewed many Mandan Indians and
drew maps from the tales they were told.
From May through October, Fort Mandan and the North Dakota Lewis and
Clark Interpretive Center in Washburn, North Dakota, invite volunteers with RVs to
participate in what they call the Extended-Stay Volunteer Program. Volunteers come
for eight-day or one-month stints during which they water trees, wash picnic tables,
escort tour groups through the fort and interpretive center, and more. In return for
their services, usually about 20 hours a week, volunteers get a free RV site with
full hookups and discounts in the gift shop and at local attractions.
Lewis & Clark
Fort Mandan Foundation, P.O. Box 607, Washburn, ND 58577, 877-462-8535 or
701-462-8535, www.fortmandan.com.
In return for roughly six hours of work a day, the foundation provides these volunteers
with a room at the Bunkhouse Motel and a name badge (complete with a personal photo) that
allows them to eat free at the Chuckwagon's all-you-can eat buffet, the Maltese Burger, or
the Badlands Pizza Parlor.
The volunteer season runs from mid-May to mid-September and is divided into three
segments. If you come in mid-May, you'll be in charge of painting, planting flowers, and
sprucing up the little town with its wooden sidewalks, split-rail fences, barn-board buildings,
and wooden benches. This perfectly coiffed town could easily double as Disneyland's Fron-
tierland. Those volunteer stints run for five days.
Starting in June when the musical kicks off, volunteers come for eight-day “terms” to
do everything from answering questions at the Medora Doll House—an antique doll mu-
seum housed in the old home of the Marquis de Mores, the guy who founded Medora back
in 1883—to passing out programs at the Old Town Hall Theater for the one-man show on
the life of Roosevelt, aptly entitled
Bully
. Around August 15, after the college kids have all
returned to school, volunteers even take over such end-of-season duties as catering, running
the Bully Pulpit Golf Course, and managing the retail establishments.
When the volunteer program was first launched in 1998, there were 44 applications for
the 16 positions. Today, more than 400 volunteers show up, 22 per week from early June
through the first of September.
