They Looked Good on Paper

By Kevin Bonham, Grand Forks Herald, N.D.

Jul. 14–STUMP LAKE, N.D. — Two fledgling communities rose above the prairie near the shores of Stump Lake 125 years ago.

In 1882, Harrisburg and Wamduska, N.D., promised potential settlers a picturesque view of Stump Lake, with 18 miles of shoreline and with a distance across of about 1 1/2 miles.

But accompanying hopes were long ago punctured.

Harrisburg and Wamduska were two of many “paper towns” built on the Dakota Territory plains in the early 1880s, started by speculators or townsite companies, according to Erling Rolfsrud’s book, “The Story of North Dakota.”

These paper towns usually were located on river landings or where they expected the railroad to build as tracks stretched westward across the Northern Plains. The hope was that the prospective towns would become agricultural shipping centers, or, in the case of Stump Lake and Devils Lake, recreational and business centers.

The early 1880s was a time of a fierce competitive battle between the St. Paul, Minneapolis and Manitoba Railroad and the Northern Pacific Railway, according to “The Great Northern Railway: A History.”

They were trying to beat each other to extend their lines — and their wealth — into northeastern Dakota Territory.

The StPM&M, more commonly known as the Manitoba back then, concentrated on three lines in eastern Dakota Territory:

–48 miles from Breckenridge, Minn., to Durbin, N.D., (near present-day Absaraka, N.D.).

–83 miles from Barnesville, Minn., through Fargo to Reynolds, N.D..

–12 miles from Grand Forks west to the tiny community of Ojata.

In 1881, the westbound Manitoba line reached Larimore. By 1882, the Manitoba began extending its Fargo-Reynolds line to Neche, N.D., just south of the Canadian border.

It also set aim at an infant community just north of the area’s largest lake. The town, Creel City, named after its surveyor, H.M. Creel, was renamed just a few years later to Devils Lake.

Paper town dreams

Advertisements for Harrisburg painted pictures of high-banked shores rimmed with trees, and the potential of a harbor for a fleet of steamboats that would provide transportation to settlements that would grow up all along the lake.

They offered hope, if not promise, that James J. Hill would extend the Manitoba line to Harrisburg, which would serve as a terminus. The Manitoba later became known as the Great Northern Railway.

Today, both the NP and the Great Northern are known as the Burlington Northern-Santa Fe Railway.

By mid-May 1882, Harrisburg had 11 businesses, according to the Nelson County History, a centennial history book. The town’s proprietors included prominent Grand Forks resident Judge George H. Walsh and C.T. Harris, who had obtained squatter’s rights to some of the property that now is in Nelson County.

Harrisburg was being promoted by steamboat captain and Grand Forks founder Alexander Griggs, as well as Judson LaMoure of Pembina and Col. O.M. Towner.

Griggs, a business associate of Great Northern Founder James J. Hill, was confident his friend would extend the line in 1882 from Larimore, N.D., in western Grand Forks County directly west to Stump Lake.

The townsite company had laid out a community with 60 residential lots. Word had spread widely that Harrisburg would serve as a railroad crossroads for tracks extending from Breckenridge through Hope, N.D., and from Grand Forks.

Meanwhile, Wamduska also was being platted nearby. Its hallmark was the Wamduska Hotel, completed in the spring of 1882. The three-story brick hotel was marketed throughout the Upper Midwest. Historical accounts vary, but it had somewhere between 33 and 44 rooms and reportedly had 100 beds.

By all accounts of the day, it was a grand hotel, with a 25-by-40-foot dining room that also served as a ballroom.

The main entrance featured double doors that led into the lobby featuring a grand spiral staircase, according to an account written by Myrna Baumann for a 2002 event at the Stump Lake Pioneer Village.

“As a child, I recall climbing those stairs, which allowed you to look down from the third story to the lobby,” she wrote.

Dreams dashed

In July 1882, just as the Wamduska was preparing for its grand opening, word reached Stump Lake that Hill had dropped plans for developing the railroad through Harrisburg and Wamduska.

Instead, Hill choose a route about 10 miles to the north.

Stories have varied as to why Hill bypassed the two Stump Lake communities.

One says an area landowner refused to sell land to Hill. Another speculates that a landowner near present-day Lakota, N.D., had some dirt on Hill and he vowed to divulge that information if Hill didn’t bring the railroad through his property.

Whatever the reason, by late summer 1882, what was to become the Great Northern Railway was taking a route northwest out of Larimore toward a community that became known as Bartlett, N.D., located about five miles west of what would become Lakota, N.D.

Bartlett, located just across the Nelson-Ramsey county line, more commonly was known as End of the Track at the time. It’s where railroad construction workers lived while they built the Great Northern track westward from Larimore, N.D.

Historical documents suggest End of the Track had a population as high as 2,000 in late 1882. However, they didn’t stay long.

In the spring of 1883, the Nelson County seat of Lakota was established four miles to the east, and most of End of the Track’s population moved there.

By 1890, End of the Track’s population had declined to 75, according to North Dakota Place Names, a book by Douglas A. Wick.

Today, little is left of Bartlett, although it remains listed on North Dakota highway maps and in atlases.

As for the rumored rail line from Hope, N.D.? It was extended northwest toward Stump Lake, but instead of reaching Harrisburg, it veered westward at McVille, N.D., and passed instead through Pekin, N.D., to the south.

Harrisburg and other “paper towns” disappeared altogether, their memories kept alive only in historical records and in folklore passed down from generation to generation.

The Wamduska Hotel survived for a few decades. It continued as a hotel until 1889. By the 1890s, it had become a private hunting lodge used by wealthy or otherwise prominent people from throughout the nation.

The surrounding land was farmed. But by the Great Depression, it had fallen into disrepair and finally was demolished in the 1950s.

Reach Kevin Bonham at 780-1269; (800) 477-6572, ext. 269; or kbonham@gfherald.com.

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