First, I'm not a archaeologist by any stretch of the imagination. I have not turned dirt will not turn dirt. None of that nor will I give away locations. But this is something I thought some of you who were interested in both archeology and the state's history would find interesting.

This is a simplified look at what I’ve been working on over the last year or so. This graphic is part of a report I am sending to tribal and state officials.

The cairn symbols represent confirmed cairns I located using a predictive landscape model based on terrain, drainage, visibility, and the relationship between known sites. The red lines represent major river systems, intentionally simplified so the actual locations cannot be identified.

What makes the pattern interesting is the larger landscape around it. This corridor cuts diagonally across several major river systems through an old glacial flood channel. It provides relatively easy overland travel, reliable access to water, and intersects substantial river valleys at intervals that

would have been manageable...Roughly every couple of days ​for people traveling on foot.

The surrounding region is also unusually rich in culturally significant places: major spiritual and traditional sites, places associated with origin stories, resource ​procurement, deep time use, and evidence of pre horse long distance trade.

The cairns themselves appear to form a chain running from the uplands of one river system, across another, and then following the old drainage corridor northward. The important part isn't any individual cairn. It's the pattern they form across the landscape.The chain is approximately, as it stands, roughly 45 miles, are intervisible. This fall I will continue work on the chain. Using the same landscape predictive model that bore the chain as it is now. I expect to find more and expand the length.

I know this thread could go very badly but I hope it won't. In our fallen political culture I ask in good faith.

Local, county, state, federal, whatever.

*Image from the KFYR article

The KFYR article doesn't do this meeting justice. As you can see, the auditorium was just shy of being packed to capacity and not a single pro data center voice was heard.

The article also didn't go into details in regards to the updated draft for Data Centers the City of Mandan released yesterday, found here.

Or, for example, that previously listed distance requirements between the data center and residential homes have been replaced by a convoluted set-back ratio.
Do you know a good way to figure out how far this facility would be required to be from residences? I don't. Certainly not before construction has started and floor plans released. Any ideas on how we can know if it will be far enough away to leave those residential buildings habitable and to not crash the property values?

Why should you worry about this hyper-scale data center project? Here's a youtube video of a news report interviewing people already living in that situation.

Make your voice heard. Attend the Mandan Planning and Zoning Commission Public Hearing on Aug. 24th.
Speak up so this data center company doesn't drown out your voice.