By Marvin Baker, a new weekly column in The Kenmare News
Posted 3/26/19 (Tue)
Several weeks ago my wife and I attended a party that was essentially the christening of a new bank in
It was the First Western Bank & Trust on
Loan officers, tellers, IT folks and even janitors were showing people around, giving them a glimpse of the latest and greatest construction in the capital city.
We visited one of the loan officer’s office. He is a huge baseball fan and has a bat autographed by the Bismarck Larks mounted on a wall and right next to it is a huge photo of the
I stared at that photo for the longest time trying to figure out when it might have been taken.
For two years, in 1985 and 1986, I played in that park while I was on the
After awhile the loan officer said to me, “I suppose you remember the park that way?” I told him I did from the ‘80s and he said the ball park has been changed to where we knew home plate to be is now deep center field.
Actually I was aware of that from watching high school baseball highlights on the TV news.
But the picture? I couldn’t guess because I couldn’t find a clue to tip me off as to the year.
He said it was taken in 1951 and he pointed out that the capitol was also in the aerial photo and that nothing but farmland was north of it.
The population of
We then talked about the growth of the capital city since that time. Every decade,
Nothing north of the capitol: That meant no K-mart, no Gateway Mall, no
By 1976, Gateway and Century were in operation and Century Avenue, running adjacent to both, was becoming a busy road.
But that’s only part of the story.
The real story of the suburbs, if you will, is
By 2000, it had grown to more than 1,700 and felt some of the growing pains as other rapidly expanding communities have felt.
By 2010,
Some of the local residents who had moved there from Mott some years earlier, said in 2010 there were more people from Mott living in
Today,
The rate of growth of the
Some people say
Regardless,
Back to baseball in the mid ‘80s. In 1985 and 1986, the BJC Mystics and two American Legion teams played on
Today, there are eight teams that call that park home, commensurate with growth of the city.
One of the local baseball teams
Incidentally, it’s the same ball park where Satchel Paige played in the 1930s. After leaving