On a hot windy day in June 1893 the most severe fire in the city's history broke out on Front Street. Burning almost the entire business section and northeast part of the city, it left many homeless. Although the four to five million dollar loss was a serious setback, the fire marked the end of the wooden era, and rebuilding with brick began at once. For many years a fire festival was held on June 7 to celebrate the anniversary of the event which resulted in so many civic improvements.
Four years later, March 31, 1897, the Red River, dammed by an ice jam north of Fargo, began rising, and continued until April 7. Conditions became appalling. Residents who had moved from the first floor of their homes were forced to leave for still higher spots via second story windows. Merchants carried their stocks up to top floors and attics, and groceries and the necessities of life were delivered by boat. When the Great Northern and Northern Pacific railroad bridges were in danger of being swept away, locomotives and threshing machines were run out on them to hold them down. The Fargo Forum wrote,
"A. N. Hathaway's family left Island Park by crawling out of the second story windows. Colonel Morton decided that discretion was the better part of valor and retreated ... from his Oak Grove residence Saturday night. Passengers from the east this morning saw three horses and four cows on the roof of one barn."
Later the paper complained editorially when Congress appropriated only $200,000 for flood sufferers in the Mississippi and Red River Valleys, saying, "Fargo before the world begging for a handout.... It wouldn't buy a good dose of quinine for each resident of the inundated district to stave off the chill he's sure to have." When the waters had subsided it was found that 18 blocks of sidewalk and 20 blocks of wooden street paving had floated away. During the flood and the six weeks while the debris was being cleared away and the damage repaired, the Forum was published without interruption. A temporary office was set up with a threshing machine engine furnishing power to operate the presses, and deliveries were made by boat.
The attractions of open farm lands and expanding industries brought thousands of settlers to North Dakota, and by the turn of the century Fargo had a population of 9,589. Important among the industries listed in a 1901 paper were two harness and horse collar factories, one of which issued a 300-page catalogue of its merchandise. One of the larger wholesale houses was Brown's Bicycle House on Broadway at N. P. Avenue.
The city was taking on a metropolitan air. An opera house, seating 1,000, was built in 1893, and belonged to the "Bread Basket Circuit" which included Winnipeg, Grand Forks, Crookston, and Brainerd, with headquarters at Fargo. Fargo was a favorite "stopover" for theater companies, and among the celebrities who thrilled those early audiences were Mrs. Fiske in Becky Sharpe, and Blanche Walsh and Chauncey Olcott in A Run Away Girl. In 1899 an item in the Record, a magazine published in Fargo, remarked, "It is considered quite the thing to drop in at the Coffee House on Broadway ... between one and five p. m. and spend a few moments drinking coffee and chatting, etc." This fad may have been due to the divorce colony which flourished in Fargo then. A 90-day divorce law was in effect, and the city became the temporary abode of many wealthy people who came to establish residence and obtain a separation from their mates. Lawyers, hotels, cafes, and bars did a rushing business.
In the 30 years between 1900 and 1930 Fargo tripled its population. Almost half of its residents are of Norwegian descent. Feeling the effects of an economic depression in their own country in the late nineteenth century, thousands of Norwegians, exhorted by transportation companies and influenced by the glowing tales of their countrymen in the United States, emigrated to North Dakota. Taking advantage of the free lands opened to homesteading, they became some of the first farmers in the upper Red River Valley and helped settle Fargo. Those who made their homes here are today well mingled with the rest of the population and few of their Old World customs are kept alive with the exception of the preparation of Norwegian foods such as lefse, lutefisk, fattigmand, and flad broed. (See Racial Groups and Folkways.) Not forgotten, however, are important national holidays such as May 17, Norwegian Independence Day, which is celebrated with parades and appropriate ceremonies. The Norse influence is further seen in the statues and sculpture of and by noted Norsemen found throughout the city.
POINTS OF INTEREST
1. THE NORTH DAKOTA AGRICULTURAL COLLEGE, 13th St. at 12th Ave. N., occupies a level, 100-acre campus in the northwest outskirts of the city. The large tree-enclosed square is cut by graveled driveways curving between rows of hedges, trees, and clumps of shrubbery connecting the irregularly placed, architecturally heterogenous buildings.