5/27/2011:
Water is one of the basics of life, along with oxygen and food. Today, we trust that the cold water from our faucets is safe to drink, but it wasn’t always this way.
In 1894, Grand Forks faced a crisis. Its drinking water, taken directly from the Red Lake River flowing from Minnesota, had been contaminated by sewage from Crookston, thirty miles upriver. Some Crookston citizens were suffering from typhoid fever and their germs washed down the river to Grand Forks. In November of 1893 two people in Grand Forks contracted typhoid, but neither died. But the disease spread, and by April of 1894, over twelve hundred of the city’s nine thousand people had contracted typhoid fever, and nearly one hundred died.
City sanitary engineers at that time believed flowing water in a river would purify itself, even of sewage. But Grand Forks examined the water and concluded that everyone in the city would have to boil their water to kill the typhoid germs.
Ice taken from the Red Lake River was also a culprit. Ice was used to cool food in the days prior to electric refrigerators, and it was also used to cool drinks. Accordingly, the city health department ordered that all ice from the Red Lake River, an estimated 8,000 tons, must be destroyed.
One of the city’s ice dealers, Hugh Dunlevy, destroyed most of his ice – but not all. On this date in 1894, Dunlevy was found guilty of delivering diseased and condemned ice in violation of city edicts during the fearful epidemic. Dunlevy had advertised his ice as being cut from Detroit Lake in Minnesota, but he mistakenly delivered some Red Lake River ice, too.
According to a newspaper report, the ice affair created “considerable excitement and indignation against Dunlevy.” He was fined $20 and he destroyed the bad ice.
After the typhoid epidemic ended, the city of Grand Forks installed a modern water filtration system using sand and gravel, the first such system in North Dakota and the region.
Grand Forks then took its drinkable ice from Maple Lake, fifty miles east of the city, or from Detroit Lakes (130 miles away). Still, the ice men cut blocks from the Red Lake River, but only for iceboxes, and only if the ice was … quote … “remote from all sewerage.”
Dakota Datebook written by Dr. Steve Hoffbeck, MSUM History Department, with research by Ryan Berget.
Sources:
“Sold Red Lake Ice,”Grand Forks Herald, May 27, 1894.
“He Delivered Diseased Ice,” Minneapolis Tribune, May 28, 1894, p. 3.
“Ventilated the Ice,” Grand Forks Herald, March 1, 1894.
“Sold Poor Ice,” Minneapolis Tribune, March 2, 1894, p. 2.
“Iceman Ready With Fine Frozen Aqua,” Grand Forks Herald, April 29, 1914, p. 6.
“Maple Lake Ice,” Grand Forks Herald,February 12, 1903, p. 6.
“John Lynch,” Grand Forks Herald, December 12, 1897, p. 4.
“An Instructive Case,” American Architect and Building News, June 22, 1895, p. 113.