"He placed over the door of his 10 × 12 office the sign 'Post Office', on the door the sign 'Law Office', and in the window 'Land Office.' He raised lettuce on the earth roof of his log shack, and decorated the inside walls with papers sent by the folks back home. On entering, one was at once impressed with the air of cleanliness and comfort which pervaded the sanctum of this enterprising limb of the law, and it became a popular reading and rest room, but ... one assumed a risk in becoming interested in a story as some chapter of it was certain to be found on the ceiling."
During the winter following the location of the site, the settlement divided into two communities. "Fargo on the Prairie", headquarters of the Northern Pacific engineering department (near the corner of Broadway and Front Streets), was a tent town, home of the railroad engineers and surveyors and their wives and children. Although crude, the tents of "Fargo on the Prairie" had all the luxuries and conveniences that money could bring into the frontier settlement. In sharp contrast to this was "Fargo in the Timber," a town of huts, rough log houses, dugouts, and caves dug in the river banks, which stretched along both sides of the trail leading up from the ferry crossing. The two communities had nothing in common and residents of one would never be mistaken for residents of the other. The Timber used great quantities of whiskey, and popping revolvers made the night dangerous. The postmaster resorted to "double planking" the sleeping bunk of his tent for safety, and it was well that he did, for in later years he could show a board of the bunk with a bullet embedded in it.
A typical Timber sense of humor was displayed by the resident who, when buying a load of wood from two young Moorhead, Minn., men, had them haul it over to Fargo, and then drew his revolver and ordered the men back across the river without troubling to pay for the wood.
The difference between Fargo in the Timber and Fargo on the Prairie engendered a rivalry which both sides seldom neglected to intensify. Once when a wagonload of potatoes arrived for Gen. Thomas L. Rosser of the Prairie, residents of the Timber loosened the end-gates of the wagon and shot off revolvers to frighten the horses. As the team dashed wildly up the road, the potatoes rolled out of the wagon, to be picked up with relish by residents of the Timber, for many of whom those were the only potatoes obtainable all that winter.
On another occasion, as a sleigh-load of dressed turkeys and chickens bound for military headquarters drove through the one street of the Timber, with the driver muffled in a heavy buffalo-robe coat, residents of that community gradually lightened his load, audaciously picking off the fowls one by one, until all were taken. The driver did not know his loss until he reached the mess tent.
Whiskey "in a tin cup" was generally supposed to be more enlivening than if taken otherwise. One Sunday, as the time for church neared, a disappointed minister found only a small group gathered to hear his sermon. One of the men assured the clergyman, however, that there would be more in a few minutes. Taking a bell, he went up and down the street, ringing it and exhorting all Christians to attend an address by Rev. O. H. Elmer of Moorhead, "whiskey in a tin cup to be served free immediately after the service." A large crowd heard the sermon.
The law in early Fargo had its amusing moments. H. S. Back, justice of the peace, after performing the first wedding ceremony, invested his $3 fee in drinks for the crowd. The next day he tried his first case, found the prisoner guilty, and fined him $15 and costs. Informed by the prisoner's attorney that there was only $5 in sight, he changed the fine to $5 and no costs.
At this time Fargo was still Indian territory, and the Lake Superior and Puget Sound Company, hoping to regain possession of the town site, informed the Government that residents of the Timber were illegally located on Indian lands, and were also selling liquor. On the evening of February 16, 1872, troops passed through the city and camped for the night near General Rosser's headquarters on the Prairie. The troops, it was said, were on their way west to fight Indians, but a commotion before daylight the next morning awakened the Timber to find soldiers stationed before the door of each dwelling. All residents of the community were arrested and taken to the tent that served as a temporary jail, and those for whom the soldiers had warrants for selling liquor were removed to Pembina for trial. The others were ordered to leave the city lest their property be confiscated and burned and they be removed by force. They were not so easily defeated, however, and appealed to the Government for their land rights. A treaty was made with the Indians whereby the land was opened to settlement and those residents of the Timber who were guilty of no other offense were allowed to hold their land according to their original claims.
From a virgin prairie land where the Sioux battled the Chippewa, the terrain around Fargo became a rich farming country, well peopled and with acres of land sown to wheat. As late as 1868 the Red River Valley was generally believed to be a barren country, and in the early seventies Cass County was still a Sioux reservation. The first wheat sown by the acre was harvested in 1872, and there was barely enough grain to make bread for the few people in the vicinity. James Holes, whose farm was one mile north of the Northern Pacific depot in what is now Holes' addition to the city of Fargo, complained to the railroad that the exorbitant freight rate of 30c a bushel from Fargo to Duluth made wheat raising unprofitable for anything but local consumption. Freight rates were reduced in 1873, and Holes' 175-acre crop brought him nearly $5,000 in 1876 and by 1893 he was harvesting a 1,600-acre tract.
Bonanza farms, demonstrating the profit in large scale wheat raising, were largely responsible for the enormous increase in acreage and the equally large gain in population through immigration.