Established in 1872 when the Northern Pacific crossed the Red River from Moorhead, Fargo quickly became an important town. The combination of the railroad and the wheat boom created a flourishing frontier city in the 1870s. The railroads brought goods into Fargo for sale, and established it as the area's major retail, wholesale, and service center. From 1880 to 1940 Fargo grew consistently with substantial immigration. Many of the early city leaders were Yankees from states such as Maine, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, and Illinois, as well as Canadians. European immigration before 1900 was predominantly from Scandinavia and Germany, but after 1900 it broadened to include other countries. These immigrants brought strong traditions with them that became evident in the religious and cultural life of the city. Established in 1872 when the Northern Pacific crossed the Red River from Moorhead, Fargo quickly became an important town. The combination of the railroad and the wheat boom created a flourishing frontier city in the 1870s. The railroads brought goods into Fargo for sale, and established it as the area's major retail, wholesale, and service center. From 1880 to 1940 Fargo grew consistently with substantial immigration. Many of the early city leaders were Yankees from states such as Maine, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, and Illinois, as well as Canadians. European immigration before 1900 was predominantly from Scandinavia and Germany, but after 1900 it broadened to include other countries. These immigrants brought strong traditions with them that became evident in the religious and cultural life of the city.

Fueled by ambition and pipe dreams, Fargo's earliest residents created an entire city out of the dust of a flat, desolate prairie. Roberts Street might not exist if it weren't for Matilda Roberts, a resourceful pioneer wife who encouraged her husband's cousin to set up his law firm on that important downtown thoroughfare. O.J. deLendrecie generated so much success through his retail store that he was able to buy President Theodore Roosevelt's ranch in western North Dakota. Oliver Dalrymple may have been the bonanza farm king, but the better manager was his rival, Herbert Chaffee of the Amenia and Sharon Land Company. Author Danielle Teigen reveals the intriguing true stories behind many of the most engaging characters and what continues to make the "Gateway to the West" unique.

This first full-length study of the cattle tick eradication program in the United States offers a new perspective on the fate of the yeomanry in the twentieth-century South during a period when state and federal governments were both increasing and centralizing their authority. As Claire Strom relates the power struggles that complicated efforts to wipe out the Boophilus tick, she explains the motivations and concerns of each group involved, including large- and small-scale cattle farmers, scientists, and officials at all levels of government. In the remote rural South--such as the piney woods of south Georgia and north Florida--resistance to mandatory treatment of cattle was unusually strong and sometimes violent. Cattle often ranged free, and their owners raised them mostly for local use rather than faraway markets. Cattle farmers in such areas, shows Strom, perceived a double threat in tick eradication mandates. In addition to their added costs, eradication schemes, with their top-down imposition of government expertise, were anathema to the yeomanry’s notions of liberty. Strom contextualizes her southern focus within the national scale of the cattle industry, discussing, for instance, the contentious place of cattle drives in American agricultural history. Because Mexico was the primary source of potential tick reinfestation, Strom examines the political and environmental history of the Rio Grande, giving the book a transnational perspective. Debates about the political and economic culture of small farmers have tended to focus on earlier periods in American history. Here Strom shows that pockets of yeoman culture survived into the twentieth century and that these communities had the power to block (if only temporarily) the expansion of the American state.

In 1913, the State Normal School at Minot opened its temporary residence at the newly constructed Minot Armory with 11 faculty and 55 students. Site selection, reductions in funding, construction problems, litigation, and a tornado had delayed the opening of campus facilities. In 1914, the partially completed campus opened for classes. Hard economic times in the predominantly rural state delayed further construction until 1924, when the normal school received collegiate status and was renamed the State Teacher's College at Minot. Minot State University is located in the beautiful Mouse River valley on the drift prairie of North Dakota and has been inextricably linked to the landscape, community, and state of which it is a part. This volume commemorates its origin and dynamic evolution through World War II and serves as a centennial tribute to the faculty, staff, administration, and students that created this premier institution on the northern Great Plains.