The influx of new settlers who came on the first train of the Northern Pacific across the Red River June 8, 1872 brought law and order to the city. Even the saloons felt the difference--one of them closed every Sunday, and an admonition printed on its curtains read, "Remember the Sabbath and keep it holy." The Father Genin Mission House on the Red River above Fargo, established in 1866, was the only place of regular Christian worship until the Episcopal church was built in 1872. The first school was a private one, presided over by Miss Mercy Nelson, aged 15. As the Yuletide season of 1873 approached, Fargo residents laid plans for a community Christmas celebration. A tree purchased for the occasion was stolen, however, and at a mass meeting of protest the suspected culprits, Moorhead, Minn., residents, were hanged in effigy from the railroad bridge. Next morning a mock funeral was held; a locomotive and boxcar draped in mourning proceeded slowly to the bridge, the effigies were cut down and buried in a snowdrift. That night the tree was returned. It was set up at 27 Front Street, and decorated with silver half dollars, one for each child under 14. A locomotive headlight was used to illumine the tree. Most of the children had never seen a half dollar, as the coins, intended as souvenirs of the occasion, were new at the time. Although there was traffic on the Red River as early as 1857, not until the railroad crossed the Red, and Fargo became the southern terminus of river transportation, did steamboating boom. In the season of 1872 three steamers of 100-ton capacity reported carrying 1,000 passengers and 4,000 tons of goods on trips north. Bonanza farming brought greater need for transportation of grain and merchandise and by 1879 river traffic was at its height. There were several boatyards at Fargo, and Government engineers were employed in clearing and improving the channel of the river. The Kittson Line, owned by the Hudson's Bay Company, was the largest line on the river. It successfully outlived all competitors and enjoyed a monopoly a large part of the time. The income from a single eight-day trip of the steamer _Sheyenne_ from Fargo to Fort Garry (Winnipeg, Manitoba) is said to have resulted in a profit large enough to cover the entire cost of building the steamer and the three barges it towed. Construction of the Great Northern Railway northward through the Red River Valley in 1880, however, inaugurated the decline of river transportation at Fargo. By 1880 the city had a population of 2,693. An interesting cross-section view of the community is given by Finlay Dun, a British agricultural expert who toured the Red River Valley in 1879: