A One Night Stand with Manitoba:
The International Peace Garden
From the 50 State Visitor Guide (North
Dakota):
N.D. Century Code
2021 §§12.1-20-25, 12.1-32.15,
12.1-34-06
Registration Triggers and Deadlines:
3 days for initial
registration of “residence” (not defined).
3 days for registration of “temporary domicile,” defined as being
physically present in state for more than 10 consecutive days, present in state
for more than 30 days in a calendar year, or at a location for longer than 10
consecutive days. §12.1-32.15(1)(h), (2).
Visitors: Per N Dak. SOR office, visitors must register if in state
10 consecutive days or 30 days per calendar year.
Residency/Presence and Other Restrictions:
Residency
Restriction: “High-risk”
offenders may not reside within 500 ft. of a public or private school. §12.1-32-13.
Presence
restriction: May not
knowingly enter school without permission, subject to exceptions. §12.1-20-25.
Duration & updates:
15 to life.
Frequency of updates determined by AG. §12.1-32.15.
Updates: Homeless – every 3 days. §12.1-32.15(2). Others vary.
International Peace Garden: September 2025
If you want to dip your toe into Canada and pretend you have beaten the restrictions on international travel we registered citizens face, there is the International Peace Garden, which straddles the border between North Dakota and Manitoba.
From the U.S. side, travel north from Dunseith, ND on U.S. 281 right up to the international border. The park entrance is actually a few yards (oh, excuse me, meters) on the Canadian side, but it’s purposefully located between the two Customs Stations. You’ll drive right past the U.S. Customs Station, then turn left into the park entrance just before you get to the Canadian Customs Station. Pay your $25 entrance fee and TADAAAH! you’re in Canada – no questions asked!
Where to “reside” – International Peace Garden campground, Dunseith, ND
September 2025 was my second visit to the International Peace Garden and this time I decided it would be amusing to stay overnight. In doing so I realized that this should be one of the destinations or “temporary residences” (as Iowa calls them) I should include when I reported travel at my local sheriff’s office before leaving.
Why? Because I knew I’d be going back through US Customs upon leaving the Peace Garden (see WARNING below) and I wanted all my paperwork to be in order. You should want that too, so here is the address you should report to your local sheriff: 10939 US 281, Dunseith, ND.
What is the International Peace Garden?
Now let’s talk about the Peace Garden itself. The central portion which runs along the U.S. – Canada border comprises a formal garden surrounded by a scenic drive. There are a conservatory and interpretive center, a sunken garden, sculptures, a 9/11 memorial and a peace chapel. Two other scenic loop roads branch a few miles (kilometers) from the central drive, one into Canada and one into the U.S.
Unfortunately all the developed facilities, including the campground and rental cabins, are on the U.S. side. These also include a game warden museum, an international music camp and performing arts center, and a Masonic retreat and auditorium. Mental note: there’s absolutely no food available at the International Peace Garden, so you’ll have to bring it all with you.
I guess Manitoba doesn’t feel like spending much money on this park because on their side there are only a few picnic areas and hiking trails. Unfortunately for registered visitors this means you can only camp on the North Dakota side. Also, the campground is at least a mile (1.5 kilometers) south of the border, so in that sense you don’t get to snuggle up to Canada nearly as closely as you can at the town motel in Portal, ND. You’ll always be subject to that state’s visitor rules because you’ll spend at least part of every day in North Dakota and as with most states you must assume that any partial day will count as a full day towards your stay there.
North Dakota’s visitor rules are about average among U.S. states and not too tough to live with. You get ten consecutive days (including partial days) or 30 days per calendar year, which in this very special situation means that even though park rules allow you to stay at the campground up to two weeks you really can’t stay more than nine days (including getting yourself into and out of North Dakota) because the tenth day would trigger an obligation to register in this state and you don’t want to do that.
On the other hand, you can be in Manitoba as much as you like while inside the Peace Garden. You could go have a picnic at 2:00 AM if you wanted. I didn’t do that, but I did go for a spin around the loop road at 10:00 just to illustrate the concept. Unfortunately it was unseasonable cold for early September that night – low 40’s! – so I hardly got out of my car.
One last comment about the campground – it was full on that
chilly mid-week off-season night. So
make your reservations ahead of time.
In theory, if you were able to hike over into Manitoba and
“primitive camp” there for two consecutive nights and a full day spent outside
of North Dakota, you’d be able to return to your campsite on the ND side and
restart the clock to extend your stay.
The trick would be having a permit with a receipt from the park office
to document your out-of-state excursion, and therein lies the rub. If Manitoba had any intention of letting you
camp overnight on their side, surely they’d have a campground there for you to
use. So what makes you think they’ll
give you a permit to primitive camp along one of their hiking trails? Nothing.
And without a dated permit you’ve got nothing to prove you were ever out
of North Dakota when you emerge from the Peace Garden and go back through U.S.
Customs several days later.
And now to permanently extinguish any lingering fantasy you may be having about whether you could check into the Peace Garden, walk across the border and disappear into Canada to escape America’s registry. First: Doing so would violate the rules of the game, which state that you can only go where any American citizen is allowed to go without a passport and nobody cares. You can be sure that somebody would care if you tried to sneak into Manitoba from the International Peace Garden.
There is, actually, a Manitoba provincial park abutting and
surrounding the Peace Garden on their side.
Whether there is some kind of electrified fence preventing you from
leaving the Peace Garden over there I do not know because I didn’t check and of
course I didn’t ask such a nakedly suspicious question.
But even if there isn’t, what the hell would you do once you got into Canada with no ID and no passport and no nothing else? Apply for political asylum based on the unconstitutionality of your U.S. registry status? No. Canada doesn’t discriminate against registered people. Instead, their policy is to not let ANY convicted felon of any kind into their country. Once you get caught (which you will) they’ll arrest you and toss you back across the U.S. border where you’ll be immediately arrested and sent to prison. Is that really how you want to want to spend your vacation?
Having said all that, it is fun to dip your toe into a foreign country at the International Peace Garden.
WARNING: Expect to be searched on the way back into the US. Leave all electronic devises in storage in the town of Dunseith or at the Turtle Mountain Reservation.
The first thing I have to admit to you is that on this visit to the Peace Garden I was so incredibly stupid and naïve that I didn’t think ahead of time about the possibility that I would have myself, my car and yes my phone searched on my way back into the US.
After looking over my paperwork for a worryingly long period of time, the young man at the Customs window directed me to pull my car into the garage door of the vehicle search area (see photo). From there an older man led me into the building lobby, where I and my cell phone were searched.
I took this photo from within the Peace Garden, just to show you how close the US Customs building is (left background). See that garage door back there? That's where they made me pull my car in to get searched.
It’s a good thing everything about me these days is so squeaky clean – I don’t have a data plan or wifi on my phone, and that means I have no games or downloaded apps, so the young man at the customs counter spent most of his time scrolling through my travel photos in folders with names like “2023 Pac NW Tour.” Even so this took him about 15 minutes.
Once the young man handed my phone back the older man led me back to my car. After I was safely away from the area I looked my car over and it seemed that the search had been pretty cursory. I couldn’t find anything that looked like it had been moved – even my bag of souvenirs. Similarly, it looked like the young man hadn’t screwed around with my phone very much.
However – it’s still a nerve wracking experience to have your phone searched even when you know there’s nothing to find there. My local police department couldn’t do that without a warrant, but now here I was with no choice in the matter if I felt like getting back into the US. After having this experience my message to you is clear – leave all electronic devices in storage in the town of Dunseith or the nearby Turtle Mountain Reservation before proceeding to the International Peace Garden!
Dunseith is a small town, but it’s big enough to have a decent sized commercial district along US 281. On my way out I was too rattled from my experience to stop and look around for a storage spot for next time, but I do think it’s a big enough commercial district to find safe storage someplace – maybe a truck stop or travel center with storage lockers or something.
The Ojiba Nation Turtle Mountain Band Indian Reservation is the next town to the east of Dunseith and also has a significant commercial area, in case you come up short in Dunseith.
If you have any misgivings about being separated from your electronics even for a couple of days, you should also know there’s no cell service at the Peace Garden, so it’s a waste even to have you phone with you unless you can’t live without your games. If you want to take commemorative photos, bring a cheap camera with a USB connection. Let them search that.
What we all need to get used to is that your past felony offense, especially given the nature of that offense and your registry status, makes you a suspicious person to the small staff at a sleepy little Customs facility with not much else to do that day. Expect to be searched, and if it doesn’t happen count yourself lucky.
Here is the notice the nice
young man gave me explaining that US Customs has the authority to do all this:
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