Snow-Bismarck TB

Please drop this item in rural OR Premium Member Only caches.  Do not place it in an urban cache or abandon it at a caching event.  Transport the bug in the original plastic bag for as long as the bag lasts; the bag keeps the trackable clean and prevents tangling with other items.  Otherwise, take the travel bug anywhere you wish.  No permission is needed to leave the U.S.

Photos in the travel bug logs are appreciated.  I will be re-post them here, where they can be seen by other cachers.

This series of “snow” travel bugs each commemorates a cold US city.  I am not sure how one determines the coldest US cities in the winter.  Does one rank the record lows, lowest monthly averages or lowest winter averages?   Many of the cities would appear on all three lists.  Rather than try to assign a ranking, I will simply include some cities or hamlets from each of the criteria.  Regardless of ranking, we have to  acknowledge that all of the locations identified in this series are really, really cold places in winter.

Bismarck, North Dakota recorded low temperatures of -45 in both 1916 and 1936.   Bismarck is the capital of the state and the county seat of Burleigh County.  It is the second most populous city in North Dakota after Fargo. The city's population was 61,272 at the 2010 census. 

Before the arrival of white settlers, present-day central North Dakota was inhabited by the Mandan Native American tribe.  In 1872 the future capital city was founded at what was then called Missouri Crossing, so named because the Lewis and Clark Expedition crossed the river there. The new town was called Edwinton, after Edwin Ferry Johnson, engineer-in-chief for the Northern Pacific Railway.  In 1873, however, the Northern Pacific Railway renamed the city Bismarck, in honor of German chancellor Otto von Bismarck, in hopes of attracting German investment.