North Dakota: A Guide to the Northern Prairie StateFederal Writers' Project of the Works Progress Administration for the State of North Dakota
History
North Dakota: A Guide to the Northern Prairie State
Federal Writers' Project of the Works Progress Administration for the State of North Dakota
North Dakota; North Dakota -- Guidebooks
15. GOOD SAMARITAN SCHOOL FOR CRIPPLED CHILDREN, 716 7th St. S.,
stands on the site of a log cabin, the birthplace on August 27, 1871,
of Anna Thoresen, later Mrs. Anna Roe, first white girl born in Fargo
and Cass County. The school is housed in the buildings once occupied
by the first college in the city, Fargo College, founded in 1887 as a
Congregational school. The campus and main building had a beautiful
setting overlooking Island Park. A shrinking income closed the school
in 1919. In 1933, sponsored by the Good Samaritan Society, it became
a school for crippled children, a private organization dependent upon
donations from churches, fraternal societies, and other sources. It
operates as a boarding school, with vocational training and academic
courses from the first grade through high school.
16. On the SITE OF THE HEADQUARTERS HOTEL, between Bdwy. and 7th St.
S., N. of the Northern Pacific Railway, stood a large two-story frame
building which was the railroad station, hotel, and social center of
Fargo during its early days. Built by the Northern Pacific in 1872,
the hotel was formally opened April 1 the following year. After a
disastrous fire in 1874 it was rebuilt by Fargo business men at a
cost of $45,000. The new three-story combined hotel and depot was a
prominent landmark, visible for many miles on the flat prairie. Around
it flowed the life and business of the little frontier settlement and
through it filed the men and women who helped make the history of the
West. Its register carried the names of such notables as President
U. S. Grant and Gen. William T. Sherman. Gen. George A. Custer and
Gen. Nelson A. Miles often stayed there on their way to and from
the frontier. A menu preserved from the hotel's Christmas dinner in
1887 lists the following game dishes: "wild turkey, stuffed chestnut
dressing; possum with browned sweet potatoes; partridge with English
bread sauce; baked squirrel; saddle of venison, currant jelly; young
black bear; antelope, game sauce; buffalo steak; reed birds _a la
provencale_; broiled quail on toast"--and any of these for 50 cents.
One of the few buildings to escape the fire of 1893, the hotel burned
in 1899.
17. ST. MARY'S CATHEDRAL, Bdwy. at 6th Ave. N., seat of the diocese
of Fargo since 1891, is a red brick structure showing influences of
Classic and Gothic style. A prominent feature is a 190-foot bell tower
and steeple topped with a bronze cross. On the northeast corner of
the building a small tower forms a niche and canopy for a heroic size
statue of the Virgin Mary. In bas-relief on either side of the east
window over the entrance portals are figures of SS. Peter and Paul. The
cathedral, completed in 1899, was dedicated by Bishop John Shanley,
first Roman Catholic Bishop of North Dakota.
POINTS OF INTEREST IN ENVIRONS
Armour Packing Plant and Union Stockyards, West Fargo, =5 m.= (_see
Tour 8_). Wild Rice River, =7 m.=; Holy Cross Cemetery, =8 m.=
(_see Tour 1_).
GRAND FORKS
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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