History Alive!, Featuring Grant Marsh, at Fort Buford State Historic Site Near Williston

Williston – Legendary Missouri River steamboat captain Grant Marsh returns to Fort Buford State Historic Site near Williston. Portrayed by Arch Ellwein in the popular History Alive! program, Grant Marsh will discuss his life as a steamboat captain on the Missouri River.  His monologue is set in the early 1900s when Marsh was in his late 60s.   

The June 20-21 performances of Grant Marsh will be at 2 and 4 p.m. Central Time.  The Fort Buford site, located 22 miles southwest of Williston, is managed and maintained by the state’s history agency, the State Historical Society of North Dakota.  

Ellwein is an advertising consultant and Williston-Sidney area actor and children’s theater director.  Since 1996, he has been bringing historical figures to life for audiences in nine western states, including President Theodore Roosevelt and, more recently, Yellowstone Vic Smith, a buffalo hunter, frontier scout and hunting guide for Dakota Territory entrepreneur, the Marquis de Mores, and Sergeant John Ordway, the First Sergeant of the Lewis and Clark Expedition of 1803-06.

Grant Marsh is probably best known as the Missouri River steamboat captain of the Far West, which brought back the wounded after the Battle of the Little Bighorn in June 1876.  He was considered a master steamboat pilot of the Upper Missouri River.  Marsh was active on the river for a period of over 60 years, beginning at the age of 12.   Toward the end of his life, in his mid-70s, he was reputed to be the oldest steamboat captain in active service in the United States.  Following his death on January 2, 1916, he was buried in St. Mary’s Cemetery in Bismarck.

The State Historical Society of North Dakota sponsors the History Alive! program to explore the lives and times of decades gone by.  Begun in 1988, the unique program combines the theater arts with history.  The 20-minute monologues are based on original letters, diaries and other documents, many from the archives of the State Historical Society of North Dakota.

For more information, contact Fort Buford State Historic Site at the State Historical Society of North Dakota at (701) 328-1476 or visit the agency’s web site at www.history.nd.gov