Fargo residents pulled out all the stops for the city’s 75th anniversary of incorporation. A weeklong celebration of daily events marked the occasion.
Fargo started as a railroad town along the Red River where the Northern Pacific Railroad crossed from Minnesota into Dakota Territory. The town was named after banker William G. Fargo and boomed as Dakota grew with the railroads. Today Fargo is North Dakota’s largest community. At the time of the celebration in 1950, it had a mere 38,000 residents.
The event was called a Diamond Jubilee, and it began on this date, on a Sunday, with the theme of “Freedom of Religion Day,” complete with morning church services, and baccalaureate ceremonies at Concordia College in Moorhead, and at the North Dakota Agriculture College in Fargo.
One of the larger events began the next day: “Fargorama.” It ran for six-nights at the Red River Valley Fairgrounds. It was a narrated pageant of Fargo and North Dakota history, featuring hundreds of cast members. Seventeen episodes with various scenes told the story of fur trading, native tribes, steamboats, railroads, the city’s founding and growth – and even the great fire of 1893.
Cast members from Fargo, Moorhead and nearby towns portrayed the 48 states, explorers, settlers, railroad surveyors and other figures. There was a “parade of progress” of high school achievers in categories like science, music, swimming and home economics.
Marvel Rudolph was Miss Fargo Diamond Jubilee. Mary Koehler was Miss Red River Valley. Senator Milton Young and Mayor Murray Baldwin crowned both women on the first night of “Fargorama.” Each woman had princesses in their court of honor. Fargorama concluded its show with the entire cast of hundreds in a “grand finale spectacle” of music with tributes to the past, and a vision of the future.
2025 will be Fargo’s sesquicentennial. Perhaps Fargorama will return with new episodes of city history.
Dakota Datebook by Jack Dura
Sources:
https://library.ndsu.edu/fargo-history/?q=content/diamond-jubilee
http://fargond.gov/explore/about-fargo/city-history
https://library.ndsu.edu/fargo-history/?q=content/crossing-red-river-fargo-begins
Fargo Diamond Jubilee Committee. (1950). Official program: The Fargo diamond jubilee, June 4th to June 10th, 1950, Fargo, North Dakota, 1875-1950. N.p.
