Strasburg, North Dakota, Lawrence Welk's Prairie

Strasburg is where Lawrence Welk was born on March eleven, nineteen oh three, the sixth of eight children of Ludwig and Christina Welk, German-speaking Catholics who had emigrated from the Odessa region of the Russian Empire, where their ancestors had settled after leaving Alsace-Lorraine. The family lived in a wood-sided sod home, grew wheat, sold eggs and cream, and spoke German at the local Catholic school. Ludwig bought young Lawrence an accordion.

Welk left the farm at twenty-one, worked his way up from polka bands to coast-to-coast radio and then to a television variety show that ran nationally from nineteen fifty-five to nineteen eighty-two. The family homestead, built in eighteen ninety-three, is now a historic site open to visitors.