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 , 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. Other exhibits include

horse-drawn vehicle A horse-drawn vehicle is a mechanized piece of equipment pulled by one horse or by a team of horses. These vehicles typically had two or four wheels and were used to carry passengers and/or a load. They were once common worldwide, but they have m ...

s, 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 Interstate 94 (I-94) is an east–west Interstate Highway connecting the Great Lakes and northern Great Plains regions of the United States. Its western terminus is just east of Billings, Montana, at a junction with I-90; its eastern ter ...

(Exit 343) and about west of the city of

Fargo, North Dakota Fargo ( /ˈfɑɹɡoʊ/) is a city in and the county seat of Cass County, North Dakota, United States. According to the 2020 census, its population was 125,990, making it the most populous city in the state and the 219th-most populous city in ...

. 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.

Exhibits

An exhibit on the Jewish experience in North Dakota opened in 2017. The North Dakota State University Fargo History Project prepared an exhibit on the

Spanish–American War , partof = the Philippine Revolution, the decolonization of the Americas, and the Cuban War of Independence , image = Collage infobox for Spanish-American War.jpg , image_size = 300px , caption = (clock ...

that opened in 2019.

Telephone Pioneers Museum

The telephone museum was a hardware store donated by Oscar Loken of Tower City and converted by US WEST Telephone Pioneers. 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. The Telephone Pioneers maintain the telephone equipment which allows calls to be made from one building to another. There are various telephony related items in the museum.

Flooding

A spill of of water flooded Bonanzaville in January 2019.

Gallery

File:Dobrinz School House Bonanzaville USA.jpg File:Steam locomotive, Bonanzaville USA - 5912935761.jpg File:Bonanzaville USA - 14496963022.jpg File:Bonanzaville USA Street scene.jpg File:Bonanzaville USA.jpg File:Interior Cass County District Courthouse (recreated), Bonanzaville USA in Fargo Moorhead - 3931611427.jpg

References

External links

"Bonanzaville, USA" website"Fiber Arts Festival" website
{{authority control West Fargo, North Dakota History museums in North Dakota Open-air museums in North Dakota Aerospace museums in North Dakota Automobile museums in North Dakota Transportation museums in North Dakota North Dakota culture Museums in Cass County, North Dakota