At 227.5 m. is the junction with ND 13, a graveled highway.
Right on this road is MOORETON, 7 m. (966 alt., 147 pop.). Here is the headquarters farm of F. A. Bagg, one of the largest landowners in the Red River Valley. He maintains three airplanes in a hangar on his farm and supervises his holdings by air.
WAHPETON (Sioux, village of the leaves), 233 m. (969 alt., 3,176 pop.), is at the confluence of the Bois de Sioux (Fr., forest of the Sioux) and Ottertail Rivers, where the two streams meet to form the Red River of the North. From 1871 to 1893 the town was known as Chahinkapa (Sioux, top of the trees), an old Indian name given this area by the Sioux who, coming from the W. to fight the Chippewa, would here see the tops of the trees appear over the level prairie.
Alexander Faribault, for whom Faribault, Minn., was named, has told of visiting the present site of Wahpeton in 1810 when 3,000 Indians were encamped and engaged in hunting buffalo and drying the meats for food. At that time the grasslands along the Red River were black with bison, who summered on the grazing lands here, and wintered on the uplands of the Missouri Slope W. of the Missouri River.
That politics was a momentous vocation when Wahpeton was a young county seat is indicated in this political advertisement in an 1880 issue of the Richland County Gazette:
"Republicans of Richland County, please remember and vote for me on election day. Come old and young, father and son, one and all and vote for me. Do not look on money or on the rich man but on an honest man. I have come to this lovely country and have made my happy home and I will be a good citizen of Richland County. You know I am a candidate for County Treasurer of Richland County. Come and spend the whole day on election day and vote for me. We are all brothers and sisters. It makes no difference whether a man is rich or poor, if he is honest; then he is a good man. Come all and see me on election day, in our nice town of Wahpeton."
The Richland County Courthouse here, built in a modified Classic style with a cupola, is considered a good example of the official buildings in this State. The first floor exterior is of Kettle River sandstone, with upper stories and dome of Bedford limestone. Across the street from the courthouse is the Leach Public Library, a light-colored brick and sandstone building presented to the city in 1923 by Mr. and Mrs. O. A. Leach, Wahpeton residents since 1896. The library contains 14,000 volumes.
In the northern part of Wahpeton are the State School Of Science and the U. S. Indian School. The science school is a vocational institution and junior college with a trades educational program that has received recognition outside the State. Near the entrance to the landscaped campus is a cast bronze life-size bust of the Norwegian poet-dramatist Henrik Ibsen, the work of Jacob Fjelde, distinguished Norwegian sculptor who made his home in Minneapolis from 1877 until his death in 1896. Another portrait of Ibsen in Como Park in St. Paul, Minn., is also the work of Fjelde; these are said to be the only statues of Ibsen in the U. S. The bust at Wahpeton was a gift to the city and Richland County from the Norwegian people of the county, and was unveiled at ceremonies held on Norwegian Independence Day, May 17, 1912. The figure stands on a tapering rough-hewn 8-foot granite pedestal.
The Indian school consists of 40 red-brick buildings housing 300 students, mainly Sioux and Chippewa from reservations in North and South Dakota and Minnesota. In addition to academic work through the ninth grade, vocational training in farm methods is taught the boys, while the girls receive instruction in home economics and sanitation.