| Summary: | Moorhead Foundry Car & Agricultural Works — built by W. M. Lenhart between Nineteenth & Twentieth on Main, in 1881. It was a stock company subscribed to by major Moorhead businessmen, and made items such as railroad cars, farm machinery and bobsleds. Almond Alonzo White, partner with S. G. Comstock in the Northwest Land Company, lawyer, incorporator of First National Bank, Moorhead Car and Agricultural Works, Minnesota and Dakota Northern Railway and Bishop Whipple School several years by Mr. and Mrs. Harold Briggs. R. M. Johnson came to Fargo as a harness and saddlery maker and dealer in April, 1879 but moved to 516 Center Avenue in Moorhead in 1880. Twenty-three-year-old B. C. Sherman, who arrived in Moorhead that year, bought Johnson's harness shop in 1890. Long before the 90-year-old bachelor died in 1947, he had become a favorite citizen. His 48 years as a harness maker ended in 1938 when the little frame building in which he operated was torn down as a fire hazard. When Roy Johnson of The Forum interviewed Sherman in 1932, the old man predicted that the automobile wouldn't last, and ten years later he suggested that the return of the horse would solve gas rationing problems! Sherman's competitor across Center Avenue, W. A. Robertson, was still a harnessmaker in 1922, although he had moved his shop one block east. The last of Moorhead's five brickyards suspended operations early in the twentieth century, even though Moorhead's yellow Chaska bricks had rebuilt Fargo after the great fire of 1893. There had been four lumber yards in the 1870s and 80s. Although Moorhead's own saw and planing mills did not continue long after the early boat-building years, timber products were shipped in from such lumber towns as Frazee, 60 miles eastward on the NP Railway, or Brainerd, 75 miles farther. The Beidler and Robinson firm, dating back to the 1870s, con tinued until 1910, but in the past half century another firm became Moorhead's leading lumber dealer. Stenerson Brothers' general officers came to Moorhead in 1922, and their lumber yard in 1946 — at 1700 First Avenue North. Gunder Stenerson had started the firm at Erskine, Minn., in 1889, and a Pelican Rapids, Minn., yard followed soon after. The business was expanded to seven lumber yards during the next 50 years by Gunder's two sons, Inge- mann and Gorden. In 1975, third generation Stenersons direct the company. Moorhead Foundry, Car and Agricultural Works, founded in April of 1882 by Walter M. Lenhart of Indiana, was the young city's most ambitious industrial plant. Other incorporators were Bruns, Comstock, Davy, Holes, White, R. R. Briggs and Patrick Lamb. Built south of the tracks one mile east of downtown Moorhead, the 3- story brick structure was 400 x 150 feet. The plant included a foundry, forge, machine shop, wood-working and pattern room, an assembly area, and a painting department. It was powered by an 80-horsepower Corliss engine. The plant manufactured the excellent Moorhead Chief thresher, as well as bob-sleds, stoves and all kinds of farm implements. When the president and general manager of the NP Railway inspected the plant on June 8, 1882, he placed an order for 30 flatcars and 16 boxcars. But transportation costs for raw materials were too high and the factory closed after four years of operation. In May of 1885, A. Anderson and Sons of St. Cloud bought the plant and continued to operate it on a limited scale for more than a decade. Eighty years later, Moorhead acquired another manufacturing plant when the demand for fiberglass boats brought Moorhead Plastics, Inc. to the city. The firm moved into a new steel 100 x 141 foot building at 2300 Twelfth Avenue South on February 15, 1960. This was a new hope for industry in Moorhead and "the first fruit born of the Greater Moorhead Development Corporation's efforts to bring more industry to the city." President John Buckman estimated that 1,000 fiberglass boats would be built the first year, 700 of them the deluxe Silverline models and the balance Free Way fishing boats. Sales were anticipated to reach $400,000 the first year. The company continues as one of Moorhead's leading industries in greatly expanded space in Moorhead Industrial Park with former Moorhead Mayor Ray Stordahl as president. For several years, it has been affiliated with Arctic Cat of Thief River Falls, Minn., manufacturer of snowmobiles and related recreational lines. Moorhead banks, reported the Key City pamphlet of 1882, "form the heart of commercial body, furnishing life and strength to all its members." Henry Bruns founded Merchants Bank in 1881 with Thomas Kurtz as cashier. When Kurtz became vice president in 1883, E. E. Moore moved up to cashier. These two men were associated with Bruns in other ventures — 218 Scanned with a Zeutschel Zeta book scanner at 300 dpi. Edited with Multi-Page TIFF Editor.
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