Here are the stories of the earliest pioneers of North Dakota told by those who experienced the decades of the 1870s, 1880s, and 1890s. Recorded in the middle 1930s by interviewers working in a Works Progress Administration (WPA) project, those who settled the land tell "the way it was" for them when they came to the frontier. Gleaned from over 5,000 stories which are stored at the State Historical Society of North Dakota, The Sod-busters, Book One in a series of memories of the frontier experience, collects seventeen of the personal histories of those who came to that endless sea of grass that challenged their strength and spirit as they broke the sod and farmed the land. Each book is illustrated with photographs from North Dakota collections. Book jacket.