3/5/2010:
Fort Totten was established on the south shore of Devils Lake in 1867 and the City of Devils Lake was established on the north shore in 1883 under speculation that the Great Northern Railroad would be running a track into this area. Although the distance between these two points was approximately eleven miles, an overland route around the lake would consist of a two day venture of over seventy miles. In 1882, Captain Edward Edson Heerman, a seasoned Mississippi steamboat captain, sensed an opportunity to operate a steamboat on this inland sea. He could transport stores for the military, obtain mail contracts and carry supplies to points around the lake for the farmers and merchants who were quickly arriving for the free land.
Thirteen railroad carloads of material, including the boiler, lumber and hardware, were hauled overland from Larimore to the shores of Devils Lake and a steamboat, with a burden of 200 tons, was constructed in the winter of 1882. Christened the "Minnie H," after Heerman's daughter, it was completed in time to meet the first train arriving on July 4, 1883 and set out on its maiden voyage with 400 passengers. For the next twenty-five years, Capt Heerman would operate this and other vessels on Devils Lake until the waters receded to a depth where steamboat traffic was no longer a viable business. In 1909 the Minnie H was docked in a pasture and partly dismantled with much of the lumber salvaged for other uses. Only the ribs and keel remained.
On this date in 1929, Captain Heerman, at age 94, requested that four gavels, that had been fashioned by the students at the Devils Lake School for the Deaf from the rudder of the Minnie H, be presented - one each to Governor George Shafer, Lt. Gov. John Carr, Speaker of the House Edwin Traynor and Louis Crawford, of the State Historical Society. Devils Lake Mayor A. V. Haig appeared before a joint session of the State Legislature on behalf of Captain Heerman and presented the gavels. This occasion was picked, both to honor the first native born governor of North Dakota, and to thank the legislators for assistance in the Missouri River Diversion survey in an effort to once again restore the lake to its former size and beauty.
The Missouri River Diversion, once promised, would never reach Devils Lake. Ironically, it was almost one hundred years from when Captain Heerman first launched the Minnie H that the waters of Devils Lake, rising through natural processes, would surround the bleached ribs of the old steamboat and she would once again, at least in spirit, plow the waters of this inland sea.
Dakota Datebook written by Jim Davis
Sources:
The Bismarck Capitol March 8, 1929
Journal of the House of the Twenty-First Session of the Legislative Assembly - 1929.