Fort Union Trading Post National Historic Site

Landmark

A 26-room French chateau on the empty Dakota Badlands prairie, built in 1883 by an exiled French nobleman, the Marquis de Mores, who tried to build a meatpacking empire in Medora at the same time young Theodore Roosevelt was ranching nearby. The furnishings are mostly original -- walk through and it still looks mid-unpacking, a genuinely strange collision of Parisian aristocracy and frontier cattle country.

Attraction

A flyable-collection aviation museum next to Hector International Airport, restoring WWII-era warbirds and vintage aircraft that occasionally taxi out and take to the sky during open-house events -- a hands-on, kid-magnet stop at the eastern gateway of I-94.

Attraction

The real wood chipper used as a prop in the Coen Brothers' 'Fargo' sits inside the visitor center at I-94 exit 348 (complete with a fake leg for photos), steps from the Celebrity Walk of Fame's cement hand- and footprints -- the ultimate 'we saw the sign, we had to stop' roadside gag gift.

Landmark

Two civilizations, one bluff over the Missouri: reconstructed 1870s cavalry post where Custer lived before riding out to the Little Bighorn, and six rebuilt earthlodges from a Mandan village that stood here since roughly 1575 until smallpox emptied it in 1781. Living-history tours let you walk into the Custer House parlor and then descend into an earthlodge minutes later -- rare side-by-side storytelling of military and Native history on the same hilltop.

Roadside & scenic

World's largest scrap-metal sculpture (Guinness-certified 2002): 110 feet tall, 150 feet wide, built from oil well pipe and tank scrap by local artist Gary Greff. It's the opening landmark of the Enchanted Highway, visible from I-94 and reachable via a short spur off Exit 72 near Gladstone -- the classic 'first stop' photo op that starts the 32-mile sculpture drive to Regent.

Landmark

A major Hidatsa/Mandan trade hub for centuries -- Lewis and Clark stopped here in 1804 and met Sacagawea nearby -- where you can still see the visible circular depressions of earthlodge villages pressed into the prairie itself, no reconstruction needed. The visitor center holds an extraordinary artifact collection and a full-size earthlodge replica you can walk into.