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territory's capital.
• "At each we were entertained at, at least, one very elaborate banquet," Spaulding wrote. "I recall that at Frankfort there was no settlement of any size and at Odessa, in North Dakota, there was nothing but a platted city and one building."
• A newspaper correspondent traveling with the commission described Ordway thus: "Ordway has a marked

advantage by common consent, over any other competing point. She lies on a high table-land, 20 feet above the Elm river, which environs her on two sides, and has the site for a city of 50,000 people. The Northwestern railroad runs through here, while the Milwaukee is only three miles away, and the enthusiastic citizens claim that the town is bound to be the railroad center of this section."
• Aberdeen's residents "did the honors to the visitors in fine style," the correspondent wrote, "entertaining them at the Sherman House, a large three-story frame hotel, and driving them around the town, to take in her special advantages as a capital location."
• At Pierre, the commission was greeted by the music played by the military band from Fort Sully.
• "Pierre is a unique town, larger in her mind and in her hopes than in reality, but really having a glorious future, capital or no capital," the newspaper correspondent wrote.
• Of Huron, the correspondent wrote, "It is booming (if the term is permissible in the western country) and while it has not very many substantial business buildings, it is compactly put together, and its residences inside and out, surpass anything I have yet seen in Dakota."
• The last town visited was Bismarck. "I was candid in saying that Ordway possessed an exceptionally beautiful site. I was earnest when I pictured the advantages of Pierre's location but after driving to the top of Bismarck's capitoline hill, and to the

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