Clay Jenkinson is a North Dakotan, born in Minot, raised in Dickinson, who left to go to college and then lived elsewhere for more than 20 years. But he came home half a dozen times a year, without fail, and said, to anyone who would listen, that he wanted more than anything else to return to North Dakota. Then in 2005 he did. Now he says he will never leave.
Clay’s a public intellectual, a humanities scholar, a writer, a reader of books and a climber of buttes.
In 2006 he hiked the Little Missouri River from Marmarth to the North Unit of Theodore Roosevelt National Park. It was the hottest summer in modern North Dakota history. He walked 173 miles in 17 days. His dream of encountering a mountain lion did not come to fruition, but he sat out under a couple of the best thunderstorms of his life.
Clay holds degrees in the humanities from the University of Minnesota and Oxford University. He is a backdoor historian, a Chautauquan, and an essayist. He has published half a dozen books, including the award winning edition of the writings of the Lewis and Clark Expedition in North Dakota, A Vast and Open Plain.
Clay’s mother lives in Dickinson in the house that Clay grew up in. She’s his fellow adventurer and lover of Lewis and Clark. Clay’s daughter Catherine Missouri lives in western Kansas, where she has access to a family farm, 4H, and the combination of Main Street and Lake Wobegon that is 21st century small town life on the Great Plains.
Clay is a gardener. He writes a weekly column, Sundays, for the Bismarck Tribune (bismarcktribune.com), which he regards as the most satisfying work he has ever done (for the least pay). He still travels extensively.
Clay is the Director of the Dakota Institute, a subsidiary of the Fort Mandan Foundation; the principal consultant of the Theodore Roosevelt Center at Dickinson State University, which was his brainchild; and a distinguished humanities scholar at Bismarck State College, where these conversations occur.
Clay recently appeared as a historian and talking head in Ken Burns’ new documentary, The National Parks: America’s Best Idea. A number of years ago he was one of the five consultants and one of the principal talking heads in Burns’ Thomas Jefferson.
Clay has won lots of awards, and he has written millions of words on Thomas Jefferson, Lewis and Clark, John Donne, the Great Plains, and especially North Dakota.
Clay lives on the northwestern edge of Bismarck, where his library house is rapidly being eaten by suburban sprawl.