The Railroad Reaches Ransom County

 The Railroad Reaches Ransom County

I never received an invitation to the party celebrating the Fargo & Southwestern Railroad’s arrival 140 years ago. Probably nobody remembered. Nevertheless we recall the time when the rails reached Sheldon on November 4, 1882, and Lisbon on December 2, 1882. The Fargo Argus reported, “All is commotion, excitement and enthusiasm...in Lisbon because the railroad has arrived. To estimate the importance, the value and the influence that will be exerted on our country by the road that touches us today is beyond our limited power.”

The state historical society has published a journal account of a land examiner named Thomas Sadler Roberts who rode the train into Ransom County in June, 1883. His job was to establish value on land grants received by the Northern Pacific from the U. S. government. The NP needed to begin selling acreage to raise money to cover construction costs as well as to profit from freight hauling.

We get a glimpse of life through Sadler’s eyes as he rode along looking out the train window. He observed, “The only station on the road of any account is Sheldon where there are about 25 buildings large and small including a good R.R. station and elevator.”

Later he wrote, “We reached Lisbon about 2 P.M. It is a little town of some 250 buildings scattered over a low plain on the west side of the Sheyenne River... The buildings are all new.”

Given the starting point in Fargo, the straight line distance to Lisbon is about 52 miles. My 1889 map of North Dakota shows the route with a couple minor bends that adds extra, so let’s call it 60 miles. Since reading a book about timber harvest titled When Money Grew on Trees I’ve become aware of the manpower and raw materials needed to lay a bed of rails on this branch line. The sub-title of that book reveals something of the book’s intent: A. B. Hammond and the Age of the Timber Baron.

Hammond’s operation was based in Montana, Idaho, and Washington. He saw the huge potential profits in furnishing raw material for building the Great Northern RR. He was no environmentalist with thoughts given to the ecology of the land. Hammond has become known for his poaching of federal timber and his anti-union efforts during the early 20th century. Slowly but surely state and federal laws were enacted to prevent unfettered logging.

Rail ties are heavy. I found a recent ad offering used ties for sale measuring 7” x 9” x 8’. How many can be cut from one tree? If the standard spacing is 19” on center, it takes about 3,250 ties per mile. I didn’t do the math to verify that figure, but if correct, that means it takes 195,000 ties to stretch from Fargo to Lisbon. Those old growth forests yielded heavily to furnish demand. Add other wood necessary for engine fuel, bridges, water tanks, freight and passenger cars, depots, growth of towns, etc. Progress came at a cost.

In our farm shop we had a long-handled hammer with a slim head about 12 inches long that I’ve learned was a spike maul. It was shaped that way to allow the user to drive spikes on the opposite side of a rail without breaking the handle. Here is how the Time-Life book titled The Railroaders describes the maul in action. “Five men to the 500 pound rail, 30 spikes to the rail, three blows to the spike, two pairs of rails to the minute, 400 rails to the mile.”

Labor requirements were great. We don’t know who these gandy dancers were that built the first track in the county. We know Chinese, Irish, and blacks worked in different areas of the country, often staying grouped together by their ethnicity. From what I’ve found, I believe the laborers here were Italians. Newspapers in the day did not follow any notion of political correctness since they identified them as “dagoes.”

Maintenance work was necessary and articles in The Progress noted in 1909: “A gang of swarthy sons of Italy have been assisting the regular section crew putting in new ties for the past two weeks. They will be here all summer, for after the ties are all in they will be employed in leveling track and other section work, so that by fall this portion of the road, at least, will be in first class condition.”

In another issue, “Section foreman John Caine went to Leonard Monday to supervise the laying of new steel rails on the Southwestern. He has a crew of sixty Dagoes ...The new rails are 72 pounders and will be a great improvement over the 56 pound rails that have been in use.”

Trains furnished a variety of services. One church saved souls in 1883 with a traveling chapel that parked in Sheldon at least twice that summer. Lumber arrived by the carload to feed building construction. A. H. Laughlin gave us a firsthand account of the gold rush when he wrote, “Within a week every incoming train was crowded with gold seekers. I counted 130 men coming from one train.”

As a student of frontier days, I paused to consider this news item. A businessman in Sheldon reported in 1886 that barbed wire sold off so fast that he quickly ordered a second carload. We presume open range existed here at the time, a fact that soon changed to fenced pastures barbed wire became available.

Once the trains arrived this area rapidly developed. Those of us called seniors might remember the smoke, the steam, and the whistle’s scream coming from the old-time engines.