6/7/2010:
For North Dakotans, Fargo and Grand Forks are often portrayed as rival cities competing for supremacy in the eastern part of the state. Fargo is the biggest city, but Grand Forks has the Air Force base. And NDSU and UND athletic teams have had a storied rivalry.
But a long time ago, the city of Fargo suffered a catastrophic fire in the heart of its downtown, on this date in 1893. The fire started small and grew into a holocaust as thirty-mile-per-hour southwest winds spread it from building to building. Many of the buildings were made of wood, but "the fire," wrote a Fargo Forum reporter, "went through a brick building about as quickly as a wooden one."
The Gem Store, which sold bullets and gunpowder, caught on fire, and the flames consumed everything. A keg of gunpowder blew up, a boom "followed by the continuous and repeated crack of the cartridges" exploding.
When the fire was over, thirty-one blocks lay in smoldering ashes and clumps of molten glass. It was estimated that fifteen hundred people slept under the stars, without shelter, in the first night after the conflagration.
"Wasn't it terrible?," was the first greeting of fellow Dakotans when they spoke of those in Fargo who had "everything that is dear swept away" and who had to "begin anew with nothing but God-given energy." Alex Stern, the businessman who founded Straus Clothing Stores, suffered a loss of $150,000 when his building burned, but he was determined to put up a new one immediately, and he was hiring "all the men he [could] get."
In the aftermath of the blaze, the rivalry of the two cities was easily forgotten as carpenters and brick masons from Grand Forks came to help rebuild the heart of downtown Fargo. Two men from Grand Forks, brothers John Dinnie and James Dinnie, contractors and brick makers, brought their work crews to Fargo to clear the rubble and to help the city arise like a phoenix from the ashes. The Dinnie Brothers had operated a construction company since 1886, and had opened up their own brickyard, making three million cream-colored common bricks from yellow clay every year, starting in 1891. It was written that the "Dinnie Brothers did practically all of the rebuilding" in downtown Fargo after the 1893 Fire. Architects designed the buildings and Dinnie Brothers did most of the construction work.
And so Fargo arose in a new form, better and stronger, with walls made of brick. The recovery was so strong that the city's population doubled in the eight years following the fire and the amount of business tripled.
After the Dinnie Brothers helped their neighbors to the south, the rivalry between the two biggest cities in the Red River Valley resumed.
Dakota Datebook written by Dr. Steve Hoffbeck, History Department, MSU Moorhead.
Sources: "World's Fair Letter," Bismarck Tribune, June 15, 1893, p. 3.
"All In A Blaze," Fargo Forum, June 7, 1893, p. 1.
"All In A Blaze," Fargo Forum, June 8, 1893, p. 3.
"Three Millions," Fargo Forum, June 8, 1893, p. 1.
David Grant, "The Fargo Fire of 1893 Revisited," Red River Valley Historian, Spring & Summer 1969, p. 45-47.
"James A. Dinnie, N.D. Businessman, Politician, Dies," Bismarck Tribune, February 8, 1938, p. 1.
Norene A. Roberts, Fargo's Heritage (Fargo: Fargo Heritage Society, 1983), p. 11-13.
History of the Red River Valley: Past And Present, Volume II (Grand Forks: Herald Printing Company, 1909), p. 1003-1004.
"Dinnie Completes 50 Years Residence in Grand Forks," and "J.A. Dinnie Obituary," Grand Forks Herald files on "James A. Dinnie," Grand Forks, ND.
"Fargo In 1895," The Record, Volume I, Number 2, June 1895, p. 14.