Devils Lake, North Dakota.

As a volunteer for Civil Air Patrol, I found myself at a week-long activity in Devils Lake, North Dakota. During my “tour of duty”, I was given one morning off assignment and I went looking for something to photograph. It was an opportunity to travel to the south shore of North Dakota’s largest natural lake.

In planning for my trip, knowing I’d have some time off to explore, I reviewed online maps and aviation charts to see what I might find interesting. On the aviation chart for the area, I saw a reference to Sullys Hill National Wildlife Refuge. Though that name is still printed on charts, it has been changed. That story of the name change and the original naming for General Alfred Sully, a veteran of the Civil War and the Indian Wars, was told on my blog here. Given the history, that name change was long overdue.

White Horse Hill is a great place to photographically capture bison, elk, prairie dogs, and many varieties of birds native to the area. Viewing platforms provide safe and secure viewing areas for visitors to the park.

One of those viewing platforms can be found at the top of White Horse Hill, the highest point in the park, originally named a National Park by President Theodore Roosevelt in 1904. To see that viewing area, though, you’re going to have to work for it. There are about 100 steps to the top, and it’s a steep climb. You’ll note there are four rest stops on the climb. I found that I needed two of them to take a break and catch my breath. Visit my Flickr site to see a selfie captured from the top of White Horse Hill.

The views from the top provide a 360-degree panorama of the park, now part of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, it went from being a National Park to a Big Game Preserve in 1914, then to a National Game Preserve in 1931. From that hilltop, you can see much of the park’s 1,674 acres. If you look closely and “pixel peep” at the image above on my Flickr site (click on the image to do so), you’ll see the town of Fort Totten where you can visit one of the most complete original forts, and even spend the night in a hotel that was once part of the fort.

Featured in a Cellpic Sunday a few months back, I built this panoramic image from two cell phone images. From this vantage point on the south shore of Devils Lake, you can barely see the outlines of buildings in the city of Devils Lake on the north shore of the lake.

On the day of my visit, I didn’t see any elk, but I was treated to a herd of bison grazing near a wetland just south of the lake. The park features a 4-mile (6.5 km) auto tour, as well as many hiking trails. Bring your camera with a long lens to capture some of the 250 species of birds captured in the park. I had my Sony camera with me, but the birds kept well out of reach of the shallow zoom on my Sony. My Nikon with the 300 mm lens was tucked away at home since I was traveling light for the activity that would take most of my time.

I arrived at the park before 8 AM only to find that they don’t open the gates until 8 AM, so I drove through Fort Totten until the main gate to the preserve was open. Along the auto tour route, I spotted these early risers in the prairie dog community that parallels the roadway.

The visitor center looks to be a very nice facility, however, it was closed due to the pandemic. I’ll have to save it for my next trip to the area. I took several more images that I captured in 2K HD and put them on my Flickr site for you to view. You can see (and scroll through) the entire album here.

John Steiner

White Horse Hill National Wildlife Preserve, North Dakota.

A couple of weeks ago, I featured an image captured from the top of White Horse Hill and provided some background on the preserve and its location on the Spirit Lake Indian Reservation. This week’s image features the view of Devils Lake from the top of the hill. The top of the hill is at 1608 feet (489 m) and the lake altitude is variously quoted on the Internet, but the consensus appears to be 1447 feet (441 m). The lake is North Dakota’s largest natural lake and in recent years has been growing in size.

The route from the parking area to the top of the hill, however, seems much higher than it is because the hill is steep near the top. Steep enough, in fact, that they installed 93 embedded wooden steps, handrails and even landing areas with resting benches along the path to the top.

About the photo: Captured with my Samsung S20U, this image is actually two cellpics merged into a single panoramic view. I used Adobe Lightroom to create the panorama and then exported the resulting image into Luminar AI for final processing. The final image and its metadata can be viewed in 2K HD detail on my Flickr site by clicking on the photo above.

I encourage fellow bloggers to create their own Cellpic Sunday posts. I never have a specific topic for this feature, and the only rules are that the photo must be captured with a cell phone, iPad, or another mobile device… If you have an image from a drone, that’s acceptable as well. The second rule is to link your challenge-response to this post or leave a comment here with a link to your post in the comment.

John Steiner

White Horse Hill National Wildlife Preserve, North Dakota.

I first saw it on an aeronautical chart, but on the chart, it is called Sully’s Hill. No, it has nothing to do with “Sully” Sullenberger of “that airliner ditching in the Hudson River” fame. The refuge was named Sully’s Hill in recognition of Civil War and Indian Wars military officer Gen. Alfred Sully, who led several massacres of Native Americans.

Ironically, this hill is located on the Spirit Lake Indian Reservation. The Native American name for the hill is Sunka Wakan Ska Paha, in English, White Horse Hill. In 2019, at the request of the Spirit Lake tribal officials, Senator Kevin Cramer, R-ND introduced a bill to restore the name of the hill and surrounding preserve back to the original Native American name. On August 19, 2020, there was a ceremony at White Horse Hill celebrating the name change with these words, “I’m sorry it took so long.”

“If it was ever acceptable to name this for the person this was named for, it was never OK,” Cramer told the tribal leaders. “I am here today, not to change the history, not to celebrate the history, but to right the wrong.”

It is a steep hike to the observation tower at the top of White Horse Hill, some 193 steps on a man-made staircase built into the hillside. A few more steps put me at the top of the observation tower where the view of the surrounding area is commanding. In a future Travel Tuesday post, I feature many more photographs of this beautiful wildlife preserve near North Dakota’s largest natural lake, Devils Lake.

About the photo: A view to the west-southwest gives a birds-eye view of the Spirit Lake Reservation and the large area of North Dakota forest and prairie. At the bottom of the photo, you can see the first few steps at the base of the steep climb to the top of the hill.

I captured the image with my Samsung S20U cellphone using automatic exposure settings. Click on the image to get a closeup view and full metadata details from my Flickr gallery. Look closely at the trees just to the left of the bottom of the stairs and you can see my white car. I point that out to give you a distance reference.

I encourage fellow bloggers to create their own Cellpic Sunday posts. I never have a specific topic for this feature, and the only rules are that the photo must be captured with a cell phone, iPad, or another mobile device… If you have an image from a drone, that’s acceptable as well. The second rule is to link your challenge-response to this post or leave a comment here with a link to your post in the comment.

John Steiner