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The West seems to begin as soon as you cross the Missouri River from BISMARCK , a capital city with a small-town feel, to Mandan. Both were founded in 1872, Bismarck as a military camp to protect railroad crews from hostile Indians and outlaws. Its original name, Edwinton, was changed by the secretary of the Northern Pacific Railroad, both in honor of German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck and in the hope of attracting Teutonic settlers. Though the scheme failed, the name stuck. The city survived an early lawless period (present-day Fourth Street was once dubbed "Murderers' Gulch") and a major fire to become first the territorial and then the state capital.

Contemporary Bismarck is pretty much contained within the oblong between I-94 in the north and Main Avenue to the south. Locals are proud of their nineteen-story limestone Capitol , 600 E Boulevard Ave, dating from the mid-1930s and set at the crest of a public park. The interior, a model of spatial economy and marbled Art Deco elegance, is open for free guided tours on weekdays. Across the street, the superb North Dakota Heritage Center (Mon-Fri 8am-5pm, Sat 9am-5pm, Sun 11am-5pm; donation) divides the state's past into six resonant sections, from the dinosaurs onwards. Look out for Sitting Bull's painted robe and the bison "smell box," which offers homesick cowboys and curious tourists a whiff of buffalo dung.

The major reason to venture into MANDAN is Fort Lincoln State Park ($4), five miles south of downtown via Hwy-1806, where the centerpiece is the Custer House (May-Sept daily 9am-7pm; Oct-April daily 1-5pm; $4), an admirable reconstruction of the 1874 original designed by the brutally ambitious, indefatigable horseman himself. The guided tour supplies nuggets of quirky information about him (he loved to eat raw onions), his wife and their household prior to his death at Little Big Horn in 1876. Nearer the river, four earthlodge reconstructions stand on the site of the once-vast On-a-Slant village, occupied by the Mandan (or River Dweller) tribe from about 1610 to the late 1700s. After the Mandan abandoned On-a-Slant village, they moved upstream and settled on the site that became Fort Mandan, where in 1804 the explorers Lewis and Clark came into contact with the Shoshone woman Sakakawea (aka Sacajawea), who helped guide them west towards the Pacific. The site and adjacent historical museum (summer daily 9am-7pm, Sept daily 9am-5pm, Oct daily 1-5pm; Nov-Apr by appointment; free with purchase of Custer House ticket) sit below a bluff topped with replicas of the Fort Lincoln infantry post. If you don't have a car you can reach the park via trolley from 200 SE 3rd St (summer daily 1-5pm; $5 round-trip; tel 701/663-9018).