| Summary: | Branch, already graded to Hope, N.D. When Harris visited Grand Forks on May 26,1882, he informed the Grand Forks Herald that the railroad was sure to reach Harrisburg and Wamduska, despite the fact that Grand Forks Mayor McCormick and Walsh had left for St. Paul the previous afternoon to confer with Jim Hill in an attempt to obtain rails for Harrisburg. All doubt disappeared, however, when McCormick and Walsh returned and reported that Hill had personally assured them that, barring engineering difficulties, the road would come to Harrisburg. This was reported by the Grand Forks Herald on June 3, 1882, together with an announcement that Hill's General Manager, Manvel, would travel from Larimore to Harrisburg by team with syndicate members to "perfect arrangements already entered upon." By June 11, 1882, enthusiasm for the new town was unbounded. Harris reported that $6,000 in lots had been sold the previous month, adding immigration to the area was 50 to 75 teams per day out of Larimore. The eleven businesses had completed and occupied their new quarters, and nine more were under construction. When townsite company members visited their community just before June 11, they hadn't anticipated any great demand for lots. Besieged by prospective buyers, they hastily improvised a plat of three or four blocks on a pine shingle, and before leaving had sold 60 lots at $100 to $150 each. Heavy promotional news releases continued to appease in the Grand Forks Herald through June 17, 1882. The line of purchased steamers was to be in operation within 30 days. It was predicted that the Breckenridge Branch would be completed to Harrisburg by October 1. The Larimore Extension was reported as being rapidly pushed, soon to reach Stump Lake. The syndicate was holding back on the sale of lots, waiting for the boom to peak, but reluctantly selling to those who would immediately start a business. Then, abruptly, about the middle of June 1882, stories promoting Harrisburg disappeared from the papers and were replaced with stories concerning Bartlett and Lakota. The word was out that the final Manitoba road survey bypassed Harrisburg and Wamduska. The boom collapsed and the mushrooming city was eventually deserted. The townsite land was acquired in 1895 by Sarah and Oscar Burkland. Leonard Burkland farms the former townsite and lives in a house partially constructed from portions of the old hotel. A granary on the farm constructed in part from walls of the old hotel, sporting flowered wallpaper, is the epitaph of Harrisburg. Submitted by Verdun Burkland Stump Lake History Stump Lake began some four hundred years ago, (according to the State Historical Society), by a great flooding of the valley where there were heavy stands of trees. They died in the flood waters and were not sunken as another legend has it. When the first settlers came here, it was a much larger lake than at the present time, and of fresh water. It had three major inlets and three outlets at one time. When the Engels came here, it had 25 islands on west Stump Lake. There are only two now. Ever since pioneer days, there has been a gradual drying up of the great lake and getting saltier. The west part of the lake went dry in 1934 and continued that way for many years. Great clouds of alkali dust would blow off the lake bottom. There were some years of little water in the 40's and 50's and it would dry up again by fall. The west part of the lake filled up to Dutch Point Road in the spring of 1950; and Park of the Sunken Forest of Stump Lake, N.D. then went dry again in 1957. Since then there has been water and its quite high at the present time. The east part of Stump Lake has never entirely gone dry; but oh what a smell! The east part of the lake; on the west bank for three miles, was so deep with dropoffs fifty years ago that the youth of the time could run out in the water and dive into deep water; too deep for their swimming ability to test for depth. During the depression and drought of the thirties most of the dead trees of the lake bottom were sawed up for firewood and fence posts. It was very hard oak and ash and burned with a lot of heat. There is some lakewood left on the west shore of the east lake at the present time. Homesteader hauling dead timber from shores of Stump Lake. As lake dried, more dead wood was left high and dry, providing residents with fuel for decades. Courtesy of North Dakota St. Hist. There have been a few drownings in Stump Lake. Dolly Wishart and the hired man of the Wishart farm went to a Earty at the Wamduska Hotel, summer of 1909 across the ay in a boat. When the men returned later that night a storm capsized the boat and both were drowned. Dragging operations were carried out but they were not found until nine days later when the bodies came to the surface. About 1910 to 1911, Martin Knapp (a brother of Peter Knapp, a former resident of Tolna) was drowned in a hunting accident near Bird Island. The lake froze up shortly afterwards and the body was not found until the next June. He was found by Herman Schindele and George Engel while herding cattle on the east shore of the west lake. There were two drownings near Stump Lake Park in later years. There was a mailman by the name of Williams hauling mail from Lakota to the country post office Dismore, when his 4-horse team fell through the ice near the shore of the bay of the Wishart drownings. He only saved one horse of his team. The Wamduska Hotel mentioned earlier was built in the 1870's with the intention of there being a town there; on a proposed railroad from Larimore to Harrisburg on the east bay of Stump Lake, to Wamduska, and then on to Devils Lake. The notel was built from bricks made from 423 Scanned with a Zeutschel Zeta book scanner at 300 dpi. Edited in Multi-page TIFF Editor.
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