The influx of new settlers who came on the first train of the Northern Pacific across the Red River June 8, 1872 brought law and order to the city. Even the saloons felt the difference—one of them closed every Sunday, and an admonition printed on its curtains read, "Remember the Sabbath and keep it holy."
The Father Genin Mission House on the Red River above Fargo, established in 1866, was the only place of regular Christian worship until the Episcopal church was built in 1872. The first school was a private one, presided over by Miss Mercy Nelson, aged 15.
As the Yuletide season of 1873 approached, Fargo residents laid plans for a community Christmas celebration. A tree purchased for the occasion was stolen, however, and at a mass meeting of protest the suspected culprits, Moorhead, Minn., residents, were hanged in effigy from the railroad bridge. Next morning a mock funeral was held; a locomotive and boxcar draped in mourning proceeded slowly to the bridge, the effigies were cut down and buried in a snowdrift. That night the tree was returned. It was set up at 27 Front Street, and decorated with silver half dollars, one for each child under 14. A locomotive headlight was used to illumine the tree. Most of the children had never seen a half dollar, as the coins, intended as souvenirs of the occasion, were new at the time.
Although there was traffic on the Red River as early as 1857, not until the railroad crossed the Red, and Fargo became the southern terminus of river transportation, did steamboating boom. In the season of 1872 three steamers of 100-ton capacity reported carrying 1,000 passengers and 4,000 tons of goods on trips north. Bonanza farming brought greater need for transportation of grain and merchandise and by 1879 river traffic was at its height. There were several boatyards at Fargo, and Government engineers were employed in clearing and improving the channel of the river. The Kittson Line, owned by the Hudson's Bay Company, was the largest line on the river. It successfully outlived all competitors and enjoyed a monopoly a large part of the time. The income from a single eight-day trip of the steamer Sheyenne from Fargo to Fort Garry (Winnipeg, Manitoba) is said to have resulted in a profit large enough to cover the entire cost of building the steamer and the three barges it towed. Construction of the Great Northern Railway northward through the Red River Valley in 1880, however, inaugurated the decline of river transportation at Fargo.
By 1880 the city had a population of 2,693. An interesting cross-section view of the community is given by Finlay Dun, a British agricultural expert who toured the Red River Valley in 1879:
"In Fargo, built of stone and brick, there are already three good hotels, and another in contemplation; rather too many drinking saloons; a concert and ball room, where recently a grand subscription ball was given for which gentlemen's tickets were stated to be $25. There is a courthouse and two portly courteous judges, and a provost marshall or commandant of police, all those important officers holding their appointments from year to year; a successful daily newspaper, two corn-merchants, a thriving school, while preparations are being made for building churches. An Opera-Comique is in successful operation ... (and) from an area of many miles the dark-visaged farm-fellows with slouch hats, many with blue guernseys, some lumberers in red flannel jackets, and occasional Indians, and many half-breeds, congregated in large numbers to this opera-house in Fargo.... The immense and varied collections of agricultural implements are strikingly indicative of the breaking in of new lands. The light wagons are drawn by horses, mules, and oxen, but the ox teams are rather the most numerous."
Even as he wrote, Fargo was rapidly changing from a frontier village to a city, for he says, "But Fargo is a metropolis compared with the 'primordial cells' of towns budding at roadside stations...." While almost everyone in the city owned a buffalo-robe coat, and one of the duties of locomotive engineers was to use their steam whistles for fire alarms, a horse-car line was in operation during the winter of 1879 and 1880; unfortunately the track layers failed to prepare a firm bed for the rails and when spring came the track disappeared into the mud.
Early in the city's life William G. Fargo offered a premium of $500 for the establishment of a newspaper to be called the Fargo Express. In order to secure the bonus A. H. Moore and Seth Boney started a paper under that name in June 1873, but payment was withheld for the reason that it was printed on the press of the Glyndon, Minn., Gazette. On January 1, 1874, the Fargo Express, the first paper actually printed in Fargo, was published and received the promised bonus. From a combination of the Express and seven later papers has emerged the Fargo Forum, today leading the newspaper field in Fargo and the State. The Normanden, a Norwegian weekly, successor to the Red River Posten established in 1886, is the only foreign language paper published in the city.
Fargo had a private college as early as 1887, but when North Dakota was preparing for statehood in the late 1880's, and each of the various cities in the State was trying to annex at least one State-maintained institution, progressive Fargo citizens succeeded in getting the promise of an agricultural college. There was one close call, when only a veto by the governor averted transfer of the school to Valley City, but in the fall of 1889 Fargo saw the opening of the North Dakota Agricultural College. The prairie-land which had been designated as a campus boasted not one building, so rooms were rented from Fargo College until 1891, when the administration building was erected.