| Summary: | 84 HISTORY OF GRAND FORKS COUNTY that for a place of its size and population, Grand Forks was now beginning to be something of a mercantile point, prognosticating a brighter future. "Good business was done" says D. M. Holmes "by the Hudson Bay company in 1874 and '75, and by Viets in 1876 owing to there being no competition nearer than Fargo." But better times for this section of tlie valley were appoach- ing, forecasting the opening of a new era. Settlers in yearly increasing numbers were now arriving and entering their claims. In 1S77 the first railroad line, of those now centering at Grand Forks, was headed toward this place. The same year Frank Viels erected a 50-barrel flour mill on his real estate property to which customers came from long distances away. This mill is still used, is a wooden structure and stands upon the river slope a little to the north of the city water-works. THE DAWNING- OF BETTER TIMES. THE RAILROAD AT FISHERS LANDING. Grand Forks is now quite a railroad center, and it is mainly owing l.o this status of things that this city lias been able fo attain its present size and population, tlie bands of steel radiating north and south, east and west, having been an incentive toward the establishment of manufacturing industries and commercial enterprises. Before (he railroads came the place never attained to anything more than the size of an ordinary village; after their arrival the county,at large began to develop rapidly, and the filling of tlie back country with a population whose vocation is directly or indirectly based upon agriculture, soon wrought a magic change. Simultaneously with this immigration, Grand Forks forthwith began to grow, but primarily, all that is now centered here has been rendered possible by agriculture and by railroad building in the valley, which so rapidly followed. We are here concerned only with the initiation of these matters. Though a matter already predetermined by geographical situation and physical conditions, the development of a railroad center in this pari of the valley in its initial beginning chanced to have an incidental connection with the building of the Canadian Pacific railroad. ■ In the first place, the St. Paul & Pacific Railroad company built over a hundred miles of track down tlie eastern side of the Red River Valley in 1872-3, and without connection with their line then terminating at Breckenridge. The material was delivered at Glyndon by the Northern Pacific company and from that place, as a base of operations, the other company built south to Barnesvil.le and north to a. considerable distance beyond Crookston. This place was started in 1878 at the crossing of Red Lake river by this line but for several years it Scanned with a Zeutschel Zeta book scanner at 300 dpi. Edited with Multi-Page TIFF Editor.
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