Junction US 81—Mayville—Portland—Hatton. ND 7 & 18.
Junction with US 81 to Hatton, 27 m.
G. N. Ry. branch line parallels route between Mayville and Hatton.
Graveled roadbed entire route.
Accommodations in principal towns.
This short route traversing a fertile farming area twice crosses the Goose River, which the French Canadians who first explored it called Rivière Aux Outardes (River of the Geese), because of the great number of wild geese that nested on its banks. The route proceeds along the western edge of glacial Lake Agassiz. The rich, black soil—a sandless, clayey silt, peculiar to western States and locally known as gumbo—becomes a muggy, sticky mass when wet. Before the era of graveled highways, travel was virtually impossible after even the lightest rainfall, as wagon or automobile wheels became clogged with the heavy, gummy earth; even today this is true on unimproved roads.
ND 7 branches W. from US 81 (see Tour 1) 5 m. S. of Cummings.
MAYVILLE, 12 m. (891 alt., 1,199 pop.), was named for May Arnold, first white child born in the Hudson's Bay Co. trading post established near the present town site in the early 1870's. It is a small, tree-shaded, staid college town on the banks of the Goose River. First settled in 1881, it was moved to the railroad which was built through here in 1883. In that year Mayville and Portland conspired to win the county seat for a new town, Traill Center, platted midway between the two older towns, planning that if their candidate won the election the three towns would merge into one city. So brisk was the campaign that the ballots cast outnumbered the legal voters, and Traill Center won 2,011 to 450. The election was contested, however, and while the case was in litigation the Territorial legislature transferred the two western tiers of townships in Traill County to Steele County. This lost Traill Center its strategic position and with it the county seat.
Mayville State Teachers College, in the northern part of the town, founded in 1889, held its first classes in 1893. When Gov. Roger Allin in 1895 vetoed funds for operating the colleges in North Dakota, enterprising citizens kept the schools open by popular subscription. Bud Reeves, wealthy Minneapolis man who pioneered at Buxton and later became a political figure in the State (see Tour 1), was one of the leaders in the drive for funds to support the schools. In one day he collected $2,000 from heads of large Minneapolis grain firms.