| Summary: | James Hill pioneer: '' Language cannot exaggerate the rapidity with which these communities are built up. You may stand ankle deep in the short grass of the uninhabited wilderness; next month a train will glide over the waste and stop at some point where the railroad has decided to locate a town. Men, Women, and children will jump out of the cars and their chattels will be tumbled out after them. From that moment the building begins." In Hillsboro, the building activity started soon after the platting finished. According to Hillsboro historian Clarence Anderson, "crude one story frame buildings on 25 foot lots were erected with amazing speed on Main Street west of the railroad, on River Street east of the tracks, and a few on Caledonia Avenue and Sargeant Street." By September of 1880, James Rodgers had erected a hotel on the corner of Caledonia Avenue and Sargeant Street where the Hillsboro Auto Company now stands. About the same time Howard Morgan built a store on Main Street. He had been a proprietor of the Hudson Bay Store in Caledonia but sold his business to his brother to come to Hillsboro. The fact that many of Hillsboro's founders were merchants who left Caledonia to come to the new town on the railroad, presaged Caledonia's future decline as Traill County's "first city." John E. Paulson was another "founding father." Although he served three terms as mayor and represented Traill County in the state legislature, he will always be known as "Hillsboro's first merchant." While awaiting completion of his two story frame building (situated on the corner where Olsen Hardware now stands), Mr. Paulson sold the first goods in Hillsboro from Railroad construction in Dakota. An old coal burner partakes in festivities in Hillsboro in the 1930's. Note the "cattle catcher" in front of the Train. The Great Northern arriving in a new Dakota prairie town. 1 B80's. 36 Scanned with a Zeutschel Zeta book scanner at 300 dpi. Edited with Multi-Page TIFF Editor.
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