MANDAN Historical Society

Working to Preserve & Promote Mandan's Heritage since 2004

Welcome

Membership

Activities

Ag Stn Centennial

History Harvest

TR-Coe Exhibit

WWII Exhibit

Museum & Office

Area History

Book: "Mantani"

The 1880s

Mandan Rodeo / Fair

School System History

The 1890s

The 1900s

1901 Pan Am Expo

1903 TR Visit to NDak

The 1910s

1910 Spring Flood

1911 Fair & Airplane Demo

1912 TR Whistle-Stop

The 1920s

Prohibition in Mandan

Mail Order Kit Homes

The 1930s

FDR Visit August 1936

The 1940s

The 1950s

1958 Lincoln Stamp FDC

Custer Drama / Trail West

The 1960s

The 1970s

The 1980s

The 1990s

1st of the 21st

2010-Present

Area Landmarks

Cary Bldg - Mandan Drug

CCC Camp Chimney

Christ the King Church

Collins Av Civic Bldg

First Lutheran Church

First National Bank Bldg

First Presbyterian Church

Great Plains Academy

Great Plains Expermt Stn

Lewis & Clark Hotel

Mandan Hill

Mandan Theatre

MV Produce Warehouse

Methodist Church

NP Beanery

NP "Colonial" RR Depot

NPRR Freighthouse

NP Rail High Bridge

Roughrider Statue

St Joseph Church

WWar Memorial Bldg

Youth Correctional Center

Gone Forever

Central School

Collins Ave Courthouse

Cummins Building

Deaconess Hospital

Eielson Field

Emerson Inst/Opera House

First St Federal Building

Havana Club

Hotel Nigey

InterOcean Hotel

Liberty Memorial Bridge

Mandan Creamery & Produce

Mandan Flour Mill

Merchants Hotel

NP "Queen Anne" Depot

Original Passenger Depot

Palace Theatre

Peoples' Hotel

Rock Haven

Topic Theatre

Young's Tavern

Heritage Homes

Altnow-Smith Home

Dunlap-Harris Home

Ellis-Uden Home

Freeburg-Esser Home

Lyon-Weigel Home

McGillic Home

Olson-Brick Home

Parkins-Cooley Home

Stutsman-Wyatt Home

Swanson-Reichman Home

Welch-Ness Home

Endowment Fund

Genealogy Links

Biographies A-C

J D Allen

Franklin Anders

Richard Baron

James Bellows

George Bingenheimer

Margaret Bingenheimer

Philip Blumenthal

Elijah Boley

Frank Briggs

Leo Broderick

William Broderick

Frank Bunting

Lyman Cary

James Clark

Henry Coe

Viola Boley Coe

Daniel Collins

Elizabeth Custer

George Custer

Biographies D-L

Alice Dahners

Henry Dahners

C E V (Charles) Draper

Esther Davis

Tony Dean

Joseph Devine

Ronald Erhardt

John Forbes

Palma Fristad

Gilbert Furness

Aloysius Galowitsch

Frederic Gerard

Zalmon Gilbert

Charles Grantier

James Hanley Jr

James Hanley Sr

Mary Harris

C Edgar Haupt

Michael Lang

William Langer

Albert Lanterman

William Lanterman

Richard Longfellow

Rolland Lutz

Hiram Lyon

Biographies M-R

George Marback

Gary Miller

Lee Mohr

Margaret Naylor

John Newton

Anton Ness

John Osterhouse

George Peoples

Arthur Peterson

Nels Romer

Hoy Russell

Walton Russell

Antonie Rybnicek

Ervin Rybnicek

Hynek Rybnicek

Biographies S-Z

Margaret Schaaf

George Shafer

Benjamin Shaw

William Simpson

Anna Knox Stark

Mary Stark

Benjamin Stephenson

J O Sullivan

John Sullivan

Era Bell Thompson

Andrew E Thorberg

Ida Thorberg

C L Timmerman

George Toman

Earle Tostevin

Edwin A Tostevin Sr

Edwin D Tostevin Jr

Walter Tostevin

Felix Vinatieri

A B Welch

Levon West

Frank Wetzstein

Harry Wheeler

Philomena Yunck

View Collections

Artifacts - Miscellanous

Newspapers

Pottery and Glass

Photos - Buildings

Photos - Downtown

Photos - Floods

Photos - People

Photos - Rail and Trains

What's New

Territorial Days 1880-1889
Created by the order of President Abraham Lincoln in 1861, Dakota Territory was formed by all or part of what is today the states of North and South Dakota, Montana and the northern half of Wyoming.

Click to Open
1880
According to US Census reports, the population of Morton County was 198 males and 2 females.

1881
On April 1, the first white child boy was born within the new city of Mandan, Thomas G. Conroy, Jr. Conroy’s father, Thomas, Sr. was a blacksmith at Ft. Lincoln at the time of General Custer’s ill-fated trip to Montana in 1876 and later moved to Mandan to establish a blacksmith shop in a log building just north of the former First National Bank buidling on west Main St.

The Mandan Pioneer weekly newspaper began operation on October 1. Initially it was owned by F.H. Ertel, previously from Jamestown, and Herbert H. Gove originally from Rochester, Minnesota. Gove would quickly sell his interest in the venture. By 1909, it went into more homes in Morton County than all other publications combined.

1882
In January 1882, The Mandan Pioneer replaced The Mandan Criterion, as the official newspaper of Morton County. The Criterion was published by Harry Robinson who had immigrated from Wisconsin, and continued to operate until at least 1887.
 
In March 1882, the first issue of the Mandan Daily Pioneer was offered.  Mandan was the smallest city in the world to boast a daily newspaper.

A new Queen Anne style passenger depot was completed in the Fall of 1882 at the cost of $12,000 ($270,000 in 2010 dollars).

The 100-feet long by 32-feet wide building had a brick first floor and was surrounded by an 8-foot platform sheltered by a wood canopy supported by ornate iron pillers.  The wood second floor was accented by hipped wall-dormers for the windows.  The Western Union office located there would prove office for up to nine telegraph operators on duty 24-hours a day.   A cupola with a bell-shaped roof topped the building.  This building retained the title of the finest railroad depot west of St. Paul for over a decade.

A special election was held in Mandan by the Morton County Commission to approve a $5000 expenditure ($130,000 2016$) to build an iron bridge south of the railyard across the Heart River.  Not one dissenting vote.  The 150-foot long bridge would open for traffic in 1882.
 
Mandan experienced it's first major fire on November 29 along Main Street businesses.  Mandan had no fire engine , but Mandan's superintendent telegraphed Bismarck's mayor for assistance.  Within fifteen minutes, the Bismarck fire brigade was mobilized and hundreds of volunteers rushed to aid it's sister city.  In thirty-five minutes, they had crossed the Missouri River by railcar and began dousing the fire with water from the rail car's engines.
 
When the last flames were squelched, Mandan had lost three hotels including the Pacific Hotel and the Mandan House, Mack and Drury's restaurant, a hardware store, and a grocery house, totaling $17,000 ($430,000 2016$ dollars).
 
Mandan's first volunteer fire department was formed in response to the event. Herman Yunck was one of the first members of the brigade.

Click to Enlarge
1883
Estimated population of the city now numbered 1,500. Mandan claimed to have constructed more houses than any other in Dakota Territory.
 
With the opening of the Heart River bridge, the US Army changed its supply contract to require delivery to Mandan instead of Bismarck.  The loss of freight traffic from the east side of the river forced the steam ferries to lower their price, prompting more immigrants to arrive by water into Mandan.

1883 Hagers Block (NW corner Main and 5th NW)
1884
The murder of young Mrs. Julia (Laird) Kent in her home just south of the city monopolized the news.  Although shot by the hired man, her husband Myron R. Kent (whose real name was William W. Pancoast) was the instigator of the crime.  Out of town at the time of the incident, suspecision rose when he did not return for her funeral or his 10-year old son Earl.  He was later apprehended in Colorado and brought back for trial.   Found guilty, he was initially sentenced to be hanged at the Morton County Courthouse.  A later trial resulted revised the sentences to life imprisonment for both him and the hired man.

1886
Mandan, now five years old, has a population of nearly 2500.  Main Street businesses included ten saloons and boarding houses, six restaurants, four grocery/dry goods stores, three doctors, two pharmacies, a Chinese laundry, a tailor and dressmaker's shop, several livery stables, two banks, four churches, two schoolhouses, a lumberyard, a brickyard, an opera house, a flour mill, a train depot and freight house, a hotel, postoffice, courthouse and jail, a racetrack, two four-page weekly newspapers and an undertaker.
In January 1886, County Treasurer Bingenheimer and County Auditor Van Vleck and Clerk of Court Doyle moved their records into the new courthouse and offices.  The two story brick building was located on the hill west of Stark Avenue (which was later renamed Collins Avenue).  A sheriff's quarters and jailhouse, located to the west of the new courthouse, was also part of the complex.
After extremely bitter winter temperatures, spring came to the area in late March.  The Peoples and Shields stables experienced unusually high demand for buggy rentals for an impromptu Sunday drive, prompted by the mild weather.  The work of washing buggies was a leading cottage industry in Mandan during the first part of the year.
1887
The city experienced one of the worst floods in its short history. The school was closed for two weeks in March-April due to the flood. Train traffic across the Missouri River was temporarily halted in April after the river ice breakup due to concerns over potential damage on the eastside trestle due to ice chunks.

On June 13, Sylvane Ferris and 22 other men rode into town on their way to a round-up in the western part of the territory.  They settled in at Curley Sublette's saloon, the popular resort for cowmen and old-timers.  Fortunately the group "behaved very nicely while in town" according to newspaper reports.
 
(NOTE: Ferris and his longtime partner Bill Merrifield, both originally from Canada, came to the Badlands in 1883. They lent a horse to a young Theodore Roosevelt for his first hunting trip in Dakota Territory in September 1883.)

(L to R - Sitting) Sylvane Ferris and Gregor Lang; (L-R Standing) Joe Ferris and Bill Merrifield
 They became business partners in the in TR's first ranch; Maltese Cross Ranch six miles south of Medora and built the famous log cabin for him. Ferris and Merrifield were the ranch hands who stayed on the longest, tending the remainder of TR’s cattle after the Elkhorn Ranch closed in 1887. After Merrifield quit in 1892, Ferris continued on alone until Roosevelt finally sold out in 1898. Sylvane and his brother Joe Ferris were two of a handful of residents that remained in Medora after the cattle ranching collapse of 1887.)

1888
The population of Mandan stood at 2600.  Mandan continued to expand as it supported Northern Pacific Railroad operations.  In May, eighteen westbound freight trains operated through the city daily.
 
In April a steam engine arrived to power the Mandan Pioneer newspapers presses.
 
Chief Telegrapher Wood purchased a high wheel bicycle, one of the "kicking sort."
 
In October, dry conditions contributed to wild prairie fires throughtout the region.  The Mandan Pioneer reported, "Nearly all the land north and northwest of town for a distance of about 20 miles has been burnt over." 

1889
In October, Theodore Roosevelt passed through the city by train, stopping by to say hello to his longtime friend Dr. Henry Waldo Coe.  Roosevelt was returing from a hunting trip out west, where he claimed to have shot two grizzly bears.
 
In November 2, North Dakota joined South Dakota as the 39th and 40th states to join the United States of America.  No longer tied to  Congressional imposed financial restrictions as a US territory, the City of Mandan opened the wallet and increased municipal debt limit beyond the prior 4% of value to fund the development of an artesion water well to supply the city.

Courtesy of Mandan Historical Society
1885 TR Culver Portrait

The MHSoc's museum and office is located at 3827 30th Avenue NW; PO Box 98; Mandan, ND 58554
Contact us at info@mandanhistory.org


Last Updated 10/23
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