History

• • The Lost Jews of McIntosh County by Ron Vossler (1986)
  • Old Jewish Cemeteries in N.D. show once-large community, by Ted Quanrud, Bismarck Tribune, in Grand Forks Herald, Sunday 6 December 1987
  • Promised Land, by Lance Nixon, Capital Journal, 25 July 2014
  • Ashley Synagogue History
  • Rabbi Julius Hess, cemetery founder
  • Cleaning & Preservation Project (2014)
  • Burial Practices:  National Historic Registration Nomination, Excerpt, June 2015
  • National Registery of Historic Places Announcement
  • National Register of Historic Places Certificate
  • National Park Service web site – National Registry
  • National Registry Nomination
  • Ashley Jewish Heritage Day 2016
    • Event Notice
    • Transcript of Remarks, R. Bender
  • Dedication Event May 2017
    • Between a Rock and a Hard Place
    • Jewish History on the Prairie Lures Scores to a North Dakota Graveyard
    • Jewish American Society for Historic Preservation: Ashley Jewish Homesteaders Cemetery
    • Video: Ashley Rededication Full Version
    • Video: Ashley Rededication Excerpts
  • Governor’s Proclamation on Jewish Homesteaders’ Day 2017
  • Historical Educational Monuments

On May 21, 2017, at the Rededication of the Cemetery, two Dakota rock boulders with educational plaques were unveiled. It took a multi-state team of sandblasters, flat-bed and fork-lift drivers, and gravel depositors to set the two stones (one 3540 pounds, the other 4080 pounds) safely. Beyond the historical text on the plaques, the boulders evoke the rocks which the homesteaders cleared from their land prior to planting, the two scrolls of the Torah (Five Books of Moses), and the challenges faced by the Jewish homesteaders in their countries of origin and in farming the land in America. From the back of the boulders, some see the silhouettes of the boulders as reminiscent of Jews praying beneath talitot (prayer shawls).