DateTime
|
Author
|
Posting
|
|
01/24/2000
8:27:00 AM |
Mark Meyer |
Here is some railroading
trivia from the Grand Forks Herald on line. Each week, they feature a "Community of the Week", and
since I suppose 95% of North Dakota
towns were founded along a railroad, it almost always mentions some railroad that led to the creation of
the town, so if you're into
Flickertail state history, visit their website periodically at www.gfherald.com. ****
Community of the week: Kempton, N.D.
GF County town was once major grain shipping point Location: Kempton, N.D., is in Avon
Township, Grand Forks County. Take U.S.
Highway 2 west of Grand Forks about 30 miles to Larimore, N.D. Then
take North Dakota Highway 18 about
six miles south to Kempton, which is served by a branch of the Burlington Northern & Santa Fe
Railway. Why Kempton has been in the
news: Last summer, because of flooding caused by heavy rains, Kempton lost nearly half of its population when
two families had to move. The Kelly
Lenz and Emil Peterson families moved to Northwood, N.D. Name: The town was named for W.S. Kemp,
roadmaster for the former Great
Northern Railway. About the
town: Emil Peterson, who lived in Kempton for 47 years before moving to Northwood last September, says:
"It was a nice, quiet place. You
never had to lock your doors. It was a great place to raise
kids." History: This former
Great Northern Railway station was founded in 1884 in Avon Township, about six miles south of
Larimore, N.D. The reason was simple:
A grain shipping point was needed between Larimore and Northwood when
the Mayville branch was completed in
July of 1884. Eventually, Kempton had
five grain elevators, making it one of the largest grain shipping points in North Dakota. The farmland around
Kempton was ideal for growing hard
red spring wheat; especially rich was the land in the Elk Valley.
But there were problems. Two disastrous hailstorms swept through the
Kempton area in July 1885, causing
considerable losses to crops. County residents and officials assisted the stricken farmers until they could put in
another crop. Kempton originated
when two men donated 50 acres for the town site. GN accepted both tracts for a fee of $2. They were recorded in July
1885. The GN later transferred
ownership of the land to the community in separate actions in 1891 and 1907. The construction of the branch line
between Northwood and Larimore was
controversial in the early 1880s. The former Northern Pacific Railway
began construction of a northbound
branch from its main line at Casselton, N.D.
This line would eventually reach Mayville. Plans were to extend the
line northward to the international
border, giving the NP access to Winnipeg.
The Fargo, Larimore & Northern Railway was to build the track
between Northwood and Larimore, and
the company may have been a subsidiary or had connections with the NP. James J. Hill and his St. Paul,
Minneapolis & Manitoba Railway,
which evolved into the GN later, thwarted the NP's plan by constructing a competing line through
Portland, N.D. The NP sold the Mayville
line to the GN, which also built the connecting line. The NP would
eventually construct a Winnipeg line
through Grand Forks. The completion
of the line to Larimore was celebrated Aug. 3, 1884, with a special train carrying 800 to 900
passengers, including Hill, the line's
president. The Cargill
Elevator opened for business in the summer of 1886. The second elevator, built by the St. Anthony &
Dakota Grain Co., was ready for the 1887
harvest. A 50,000-bushel annex was added to the main 30,000-bushel
Cargill Elevator that year. By 1888,
another elevator was built in Kempton.
Unlike the other elevators, Cargill remained open in winter, selling
coal, firewood, ground feed and even
fresh vegetables. Oak and maple firewood sold for $5 and $5.50 per cord, respectively, while soft and hard
coal sold for $8 and $10 per ton,
respectively. The elevator farthest
north was the Farmers Cooperative Elevator. When the large Cargill elevator burned -- a fate of
several Kempton elevators -- in 1936,
it purchased the two northernmost elevators in town. The two southernmost elevators were sold
to Kempton Grain Co. in 1950. In
1971, three business partners purchased the company and began buying
and processing confectionery
sunflowers. AGP Grain Ltd. later acquired the elevator, which is now leased for private storage. J.W. Smith opened a blacksmith shop in
1890; he also sold Oliver plows. Tom
Lloyd opened a blacksmith shop in 1903, shoeing as many as 40 horses
per day. George Austin opened a
grocery store in the early 1890s. A
bank was started in 1904, closing during the Depression. The GN built a railroad depot in 1906 when the community
still boasted having rail passenger,
mail and express service. Joe Weber built a hotel and livery in 1907; the barn burned in 1931. In 1941,
the hotel was sold to Olaf Storaker,
who operated a grocery in the building. In the mid-1950s, Oliver and
Zelda Cannon purchased and operated
the store. There were two potato
warehouses in Kempton -- one in operation for 30 years and the other for 20 years. A lumberyard
was located across the road from the
original Cargill elevator.
The Mutch family operated an oil business in Kempton for many years,
later moving the entire Mutch Oil Co.
to Larimore in the 1960s, where it remains in operation. For many
years, Kempton had a combination recreation, confectionery and grocery business, which included a bowling
alley and community hall. Kempton
was renowned for its excellent baseball teams years ago. It also had a good trap shooting team, which competed
with the best teams in the state.
Economy: Kempton has an agricultural economy. While hard red spring
wheat once dominated crop production
in the Kempton area, today farmers produce
sunflowers, all kinds of dry edible beans (including pintos),
potatoes, sugar beets and specialty
crops. General: A post office was
established at Kempton March 16, 1887, with Elmer Bickford as postmaster. Bickford had arrived in the community
the previous year as manager of the
Cargill Elevator. The Kempton Post
Office became a rural branch of the Northwood office Aug. 2, 1963, and it closed altogether Oct. 31,
1970, with mail then going to
Northwood. When the Kempton
School District was organized, students went to classes in either Northwood or Larimore. Population: Kempton was a thriving
village in the early part of the 1900s,
reaching a reported population of 216. However, some people have
speculated that the population never
exceeded 100. It is estimated now that there are six people living in three houses. Ten other houses are
unoccupied. Notable: In 1887, Avon
Township, which includes Kempton, voted 33 to 1 in favor of Prohibition, which would become state law when North
Dakota joined the union in 1889. The
single individual who voted against Prohibition was never determined. A
deep well was installed in 1972 in the Elk Valley aquifer, which
provides water to the Grand Forks
-Traill Water Users Association.
Attractions: Vickie Guertin raises exotic chickens in her backyard.
She has a chicken coop with about 40
colorful chickens of several breeds.
Churches: While there never was a church in Kempton, the Kempton School
No. 100 was used for Sunday school
classes. There are several rural churches in
the Kempton area. Compiled by
Darrel Koehler, Herald staff writer, and based on interviews with Kempton residents. Sources were
"North Dakota Place Names" by Douglas Wick, the 1976 bicentennial history of Grand
Forks County and a story published in
the Sept. 22, 1999, Grand Forks Herald. **** I had always wondered why GN had separate rail lines
through Mayville and Portland, two
North Dakota towns VERY close together. Evidently, according to the article, the GN line from Erie Jct
(on the Surrey cutoff) through
Galesburg and Portland was built to counter the line from Casselton
through Vance and Mayville, which was
originally constructed by an NP subsidiary. As the article states, the GN acquired the competing line from the
NP before it was complete, which
would explain why the two routes become one north of Portland Jct. (to Larimore). It also could
explain the alignment of the NP line
to Winnipeg, which is circuitous at best, especially the part between Crookston, Grand Forks, and Honeyford.
(Between Crookston and Grand Forks,
the NP route weaves its way around the more-direct GN route, though
roughly paralleling it.) Perhaps the
intent of the NP was to serve North Dakota's
second-largest city, Grand Forks, which would evidently not be the
case for the line constructed north
from Casselton. I always wondered why the NP line to Pembina took a mostly-west route out of Grand Forks, and
then turned sharply due north at
Honeyford. (After all, such routes are rare on the flat prairie..after building a parallel line to
the GN from Crookston to Grand Forks,
one wonders why the NP route didn't simply continue paralleling it to Grafton, or run due north to the vicinity
of Drayton...) If you let your
imagination go, the alignment of the line north from Honeyford when
exteneded south, would indeed tie
into the NP-constructed GN line from Casselton north to Mayville. Was this originally supposed
to be the NP route from its main to
Winnipeg? Sure looks like a good possibility. Today, neither of the routes through Mayville or Portland are
through routes. Both towns are
endpoints of a branch from Larimore (through Kempton) that splits at Portland Jct. The Portland line
is abandoned between Portland and
Galesburg, and the Mayville line is abandoned between Mayville and
Hunter. In spite of these lines no
longer being through routes (the main north-south route in the area is the ex-GN line from Fargo to Grand Forks
paralleling I-29), GN routes in
Northern and Central North Dakota remain an anomaly in U.S. railroading. Where else in the
country is there such a cluster of
grain-gathering rail lines that have made it to the year 2000 without
being mostly-abandoned, shortlined,
or regionalized? They still are operated by
BNSF. Compiler C Frissell |