The largest single part of the wholesale trade is carried on by automotive distributors, including the Ford and Chevrolet Motor Companies. Processing accounts for the next largest part of the city's industry, and, although meat packing and creameries are important, there is a constant increase in the manufacture of steel, wood, and glass products. Fargo is likewise a banking and insurance center, and has the home offices of two insurance companies.

Its situation, at the point where railroads first entered the State, in what Stuart Chase has characterized as perhaps the richest farming region in the world, has combined with the North Dakota Agricultural College to make Fargo the natural agricultural headquarters for North Dakota. Results of experimental work conducted at the college station and its substations, extension work through 4-H and Homemakers clubs, and judging of farm produce at State and county fairs by college instructors, all contribute to the improvement of agricultural and rural life in the State.

Fargo's percentage of home ownership is far above the national average. Homes clustered around the business district are of early twentieth century frame vintage, while farther out newer cottages and bungalows, in English and Colonial style, behind small young trees and newly sprouting lawns, are characteristic of the more recent residential additions. Some of Fargo's finest homes are on Eighth Street South.

Fargo's public school system consists of 11 elementary schools, 3 junior high schools, and a senior high school; privately owned are 3 Catholic schools, a Lutheran school, 3 business colleges, 2 music conservatories, and 5 trade schools. The first Protestant church services in the southern Red River Valley in North Dakota were held in Fargo, and now more than 30 denominations have churches in the city. St. Mary's Cathedral is the seat of the diocese of the Roman Catholic Church for the eastern half of North Dakota, and Fargo is likewise the seat of the North Dakota diocese of the Episcopal Church.

The city's best-known musical group, the Amphion Male Chorus, composed of Fargo and Moorhead, Minn., singers, has toured nearby cities and eastern United States, giving concerts in New York and Philadelphia. Community singing is popular in Fargo, and during the summer months Island Park is the scene of outdoor concerts and singing contests. In June each year the music-minded of the Red River Valley gather in the city for the Valleyland Music Festival.

The agricultural college, always prominent in the cultural life of the city, has become even more important in late years with the increased number of college lyceum programs and the growth of the community theater movement. The Little Country Theater, the outstanding players' group in the State, has become a virtual authority on community theater organization and has received favorable notice nationally.

The city is named for William G. Fargo, a director of the Northern Pacific Railway and founder of the Wells-Fargo Express Company, and its early history is closely linked with that of the railroad. In 1871 the announcement that a railroad would be built "from Lake Superior to the Pacific Ocean" aroused much speculation as to where it would cross the Red River, and the untouched land along the river suddenly became populated. Three settlers, Jacob Lowell, Jr., Henry S. Back, and Andrew McHench, formed a triumvirate and patrolled the Red from the mouth of the Wild Rice to the Elm River from April to June 29 in an effort to discover "the first indications of the railroad crossing."

Meanwhile, Thomas H. Canfield of the Lake Superior and Puget Sound Company, a town site company auxiliary to the Northern Pacific, worked with the railroad engineers in seeking the best point for the line to cross the Red, since he wished to secure title to the land for his company before it was snatched up by some speculator in the hope of selling it to the railroad for a large sum. He and his engineers chose the present crossing because it was the highest point on the river and therefore in the least danger from floods. Andrew Holes, who with his wife had been touring the country in a covered wagon, was sent to Alexandria, Minn., to purchase the land on the east side of the river from its homesteader-owner, Joab Smith. In order to locate on the lands west of the Red it was necessary to plow a half acre of each section. Aided by Maj. G. G. Beardsley, Canfield secured the necessary farm equipment, hid it until Holes returned with the deed to the Minnesota property, and by moonlight secretly made the required improvements.

On June 29, while on his patrol, Lowell found a "Farmer Brown" squatted with three Scandinavian settlers on what became the Fargo town site. Although Farmer Brown was clothed in well worn overalls with a brown hat and hickory shirt and "sat with such ease and unconcern upon the handles of his plow," Lowell doubted his being a farmer. He hastily summoned Back and McHench, and the three, after a consultation, located near Farmer Brown on July 1 and 2, 1871. Shortly afterwards Farmer Brown's identity as Beardsley became known and a stampede of settlers followed. Since Beardsley and his party were in the employ of the Lake Superior and Puget Sound Company, and were not bona fide settlers, their prior occupancy was disregarded and later, after much litigation, the company withdrew its claim to the Fargo land, retaining only the purchased Moorhead area.

In September 1871 G. J. Keeney was appointed postmaster of Centralia, the little settlement that sprang up at the railroad crossing. Keeney was also a lawyer and real estate agent and his office was somewhat of a community center, according to one author, who wrote,