(The Associated Press circulated the following article on July 10.)
BISMARCK, N.D. — No fewer than 11 cities in North Dakota are celebrating their 125th anniversaries this summer. And at least 13 more have centennials this year. Another 11 towns turn 125 next year.
The celebrations are a glimpse into how pioneer-era railroad builders dictated settlement of the state, historians say.
North Dakota historian Elwin B. Robinson wrote in his 1966 “History of North Dakota” that between 1878 and 1890, northern Dakota went from 200 miles to 2,100 miles of rail lines.
During the period, northern Dakota’s population jumped by more than 1,000 percent, from an estimated 16,000 to 191,000.
Towns that sprang up every seven to 15 miles along newly constructed railroad lines over the course of a few decades often “weren’t really based on inhabitants,” says Merl Paaverud, director of the State Historical Society of North Dakota.
Their locations and names were often dictated by the railroads, Paavarud said.
Dozens of towns in the state carry the names of railroad company executives and board members or their business associates, friends and family members people sometimes as far away as the Twin Cities and New York.
Hope, which marks its 125th next year, is named after Hope Steele, the wife of E.H. Steele, who bought a large tract of land from the Northern Pacific Railroad – land that became Steele County.
Sometimes railroads renamed a place that was already named, or locals who sought to honor railroad tycoons did so.
“It shows how powerful the railroads were,” Paaverud said.
Paaverud grew up at Sherbrooke, once the Steele County seat and now a ghost town. Rumors of a railroad line never came to fruition, and by 1919 the county seat had been moved to Finley and the post office closed. People and buildings remained for several decades, but the last residents left in the 1970s.
Frank Vyzralek, a Bismarck historian, has a hobby of following North Dakota towns’ anniversary celebrations and collects buttons from the events. He’s also written railroad history.
He knows that a string of towns north of U.S. Highway 2 were eligible to mark their centennials last year, in line with rails put through there in 1905, Vyzralek said.
“But how many of them are big enough and willing to take the time to try to do it, I don’t know,” he said. “It takes a lot of effort to put one of these on.”
Vyzralek said the practice of towns celebrating birthdays got off to a slow start in the state. He knows of only one city that celebrated its 25th: Fargo. A few marked 50 years during the 1930s.
After World War II “everything went crazy,” he said. “It was the thing to do and it has been so ever since.”