During the winter following the location of the site, the settlement divided into two communities. "Fargo on the Prairie", headquarters of the Northern Pacific engineering department (near the corner of Broadway and Front Streets), was a tent town, home of the railroad engineers and surveyors and their wives and children. Although crude, the tents of "Fargo on the Prairie" had all the luxuries and conveniences that money could bring into the frontier settlement. In sharp contrast to this was "Fargo in the Timber," a town of huts, rough log houses, dugouts, and caves dug in the river banks, which stretched along both sides of the trail leading up from the ferry crossing. The two communities had nothing in common and residents of one would never be mistaken for residents of the other. The Timber used great quantities of whiskey, and popping revolvers made the night dangerous. The postmaster resorted to "double planking" the sleeping bunk of his tent for safety, and it was well that he did, for in later years he could show a board of the bunk with a bullet embedded in it. A typical Timber sense of humor was displayed by the resident who, when buying a load of wood from two young Moorhead, Minn., men, had them haul it over to Fargo, and then drew his revolver and ordered the men back across the river without troubling to pay for the wood. The difference between Fargo in the Timber and Fargo on the Prairie engendered a rivalry which both sides seldom neglected to intensify. Once when a wagonload of potatoes arrived for Gen. Thomas L. Rosser of the Prairie, residents of the Timber loosened the end-gates of the wagon and shot off revolvers to frighten the horses. As the team dashed wildly up the road, the potatoes rolled out of the wagon, to be picked up with relish by residents of the Timber, for many of whom those were the only potatoes obtainable all that winter. On another occasion, as a sleigh-load of dressed turkeys and chickens bound for military headquarters drove through the one street of the Timber, with the driver muffled in a heavy buffalo-robe coat, residents of that community gradually lightened his load, audaciously picking off the fowls one by one, until all were taken. The driver did not know his loss until he reached the mess tent. Whiskey "in a tin cup" was generally supposed to be more enlivening than if taken otherwise. One Sunday, as the time for church neared, a disappointed minister found only a small group gathered to hear his sermon. One of the men assured the clergyman, however, that there would be more in a few minutes. Taking a bell, he went up and down the street, ringing it and exhorting all Christians to attend an address by Rev. O. H. Elmer of Moorhead, "whiskey in a tin cup to be served free immediately after the service." A large crowd heard the sermon.