The Red River along the eastern edge of North Dakota was a vital trade route for Native Americans, Metis, fur traders, and then Americans and Canadians. However, by the 1910s, the need for river transportation had been firmly supplanted by trains and automobiles. On this date in 1913, the Fargo Forum announced that one of the last links to the heyday of the river trade was broken. Charles B. Thimens, a former steamboat captain, had died.
Charles Thimens was born in Montreal in 1831 and moved to St. Paul in 1851. He became a pilot, steamboat captain, and part steamboat owner on the Mississippi and Minnesota rivers.
At the outbreak of the Civil War, he joined the Quartermaster department and conveyed troops and supplies up and down the Mississippi River. That ended when Confederate soldiers captured his boat and burned it. They sent Taylor to Texas, where he was a prisoner of war for over a year. Luckily, Charles was one of a group of prisoners exchanged for Confederate prisoners and he returned to St. Paul. He continued as a steamboat captain on the Mississippi until 1874 when he moved his family to Moorhead and took a job with the Red River Transportation Company.
The first steamboat on the Red River was the Anson Northrup in 1859. After the Northern Pacific railroad crossed the Red River in 1872, the steamboat trade initially increased. Grain, lumber, farm machinery, and people were transported from train to steamboat and vice versa, with steamboats connecting what is now Winnipeg and Fargo/Moorhead, with many stops along the way. In 1878, Captain Charles Thimens launched a steamboat in Fargo. The Grandin was considered by many as the fasted steamboat on the river.
Charles moved his family to Fargo in 1882. He retired in 1893, which coincided with the end of the steamboat trade between Fargo and Winnipeg, though steamboat traffic continued for a while between Grand Forks and Winnipeg.
Charles Thimens and his wife Sarah were prominent citizens of Fargo. Their 50th wedding anniversary celebration in 1908 was well attended and covered by the newspaper. Charles also served Fargo as the superintendent of water works and as street commissioner. He is buried in the Prairie Home Cemetery in Moorhead alongside his wife and two of his three children.
Dakota Datebook by Trista Raezer-Stursa
Sources:
- Author Unknown. “Fargoans are Wedded 50 Years,” The Fargo Forum and Daily Republican, October 21, 1908, pg. 5.
- Author Unknown. “History of Steamboats on the Red River,” River Keepers of Fargo-Moorhead, https://www.riverkeepers.org/resources/, accessed May 12, 2023.
- Author Unknown. “Pioneer River Captain Dead,” The Fargo Forum and Daily Republican, June 16, 1913, pg. 1.
- Author Unknown. “River Pilot is Death’s Victim,” Grand Forks Herald, June 16, 1913, pg. 4.
- Author Unknown. Compendium of History and Biography of North Dakota, Geo. A. Ogle & Co.: Chicago, 1900.
- Maher, John. “Steamboating on Red Colorful Era,” The Fargo Forum, June 4, 1950, pgs. 1-2.
