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
From this frontier commerce, North Dakota industry grew. In 1909, a
century after the fur trade began, the State produced goods valued at
$19,150,000; and in 1935 manufactures were valued at $40,076,326, with
325 establishments each doing an annual business of $5,000 or more, and
collectively employing 3,306 workers. Although these figures are small
in comparison with those of essentially industrial States, they are
large in view of the youthfulness of North Dakota and its distinctly
agricultural economy.
The fur trade prospered until the Indian insurrections of 1863-64.
Then trapping became a perilous occupation, and traders and trappers
returned East. Eastward, too, went most of the settlers who had come
to farm. The only ones to remain were Charles Cavileer and his little
colony at Pembina, who staunchly continued to cultivate their level
farms in the face of Indian dangers. With the exception of a few brave
adventurers, they had the entire area virtually to themselves, until
the extension of the Northern Pacific lines into the Red River Valley
in 1871 promoted a period of homesteading. Then, for the first time,
agriculture took its place as the leading occupation of this area.
Many of the industries which were important during the development of
the State are no longer in existence. Because lumber was an expensive
commodity to import, sawmills were established at Grand Forks and Fargo
in the 1870's; and because the North Dakota side of the Red River could
not furnish a large enough supply for the mills, logs were floated down
from the Minnesota woods. Lumberjacking meant cash and wages, and many
homesteaders left their families in possession of their claims while
they went to Minnesota to earn money for seed and machinery and for
building permanent homes on their farms. As traffic on the Red River
increased, construction of steamers became an important industry for
which North Dakota mills supplied much of the lumber.
On the prairies west of the Red River Valley, the homesteaders could
not engage in logging and lumbering to earn money for improving their
farms; but, resourcefully, they found another way to get funds.
Buffalo bones were scattered abundantly upon the land from Devils Lake
westward, and cash prices of eight to ten dollars a carload were paid
by sugar manufacturers who used the bones in a refining process. Many
homes were built and much machinery purchased with the income derived
from gathering and selling this material. Gradually, however, these
pioneer occupations died out. The more efficient railway supplanted the
river steamers. The supply of buffalo bones was soon exhausted. New
occupations, allied with the expanding agriculture of the region, grew
into importance.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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