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In The 1890s - River Water For The Pioneers
I should know - I was one of them. And I can tell you, living on the great plains then was not easy. "Lusia," my father used to say (he came out with me from the old country) "Lusia, if the snow and cold don't get us this winter, that river may get us yet this spring." And we did have flooding, sure enough, and drought years, too.
There were a few shallow wells dug by hand, of course - and a few drilled artesian wells. Some people collected rainwater in cisterns. They didn't think the river water tasted very good. Papa drank it - I always said he could stomach the juice of sour lemons - but the river water really was a bit too alkaline and muddy for my taste.
Rail travel was next. By 1871, the main line of the Northern Pacific reached the Red River, and the following winter, the NP built the river's first permanent bridge. Before you knew it, Fargo and Moorhead sprang up on either end of that bridge - Fargo on the west side, and Moorhead on the east. Pretty soon, Fargo became the county seat. The railroad got as far a Bismarck and in 1880, James J. Hill's Great Northern railway reached the Red River.
I told you, life wasn't easy back then. No washers or dryers, no indoor plumbing. No simple turning of a tap in the kitchen to fill your water glass. Oh, sure, we had dishwashers you'd call them hands and dishrags!
So, with the river water in Fargo increasingly unsafe for drinking, too hard for washing clothes and almost useless in boilers because it corroded them...it was time, many of us thought, for a change.
In 1887, the legislature of Dakota Territory took the first steps toward remedying our water problems. So did the Fargo Board of Trade, by crafting a law authorizing municipal waterworks and fire fighting systems - with taxing power to pay for it all...ouch Even though these manipulations resulted in city ownership of the waterworks, it was another 20 years before Fargo's public services moved ahead.
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Water - a river always
flowing, the course of our community life following its twists and turns,
crests and droughts, its wooded and grassy banks. Since Fargo's early
days, the Red River has been our playground, an important trade route,
and a source of life - our water source for drinking, building, growing.
It's been that way since settlers first came here. 
Fargo's underground
water supply was too shallow for many wells, so the Red River was our
best source for water. Back then, we stored river water in barrels,
so we'd have it for drinking, bathing, washing clothes, and watering
livestock. Later, vendors using horse-drawn water tanks sold river water
house to house. We also bought our goods and staples from peddlers traveling
by oxcart to Winnipeg.
Our Red River then
was like a highway. Instead of cars racing up Interstate 29, riverboats
steamed their way to Canada on the Red - the first one was the Anson
Northrup in 1859, on her maiden voyage bound for Fort Garry.
Papa and I got out
here by train. Railroads were carrying so many of us out here, they
even sponsored a "Grand Excursion" in 1874 to get more European immigrants
to come to Dakota Territory. Yes, railroads brought us here - and so
did farming. Agriculture shaped this part of the country and the fertile
Red River Valley beckoned stockmen and farmers - Papa included. By 1880,
more than two thousand people were living here. And as Fargo grew, so
did the need for greater supplies of clean, clear water.
It wasn't just a
question of convenience, though...our need for water in Fargo. It was
a question of public health. With all the cities and farms springing
up, the Red River was becoming heavily polluted with sewage and waste
- one time, even a rotting cow carcass up river...uff da. It was already
proven in London that cholera and other diseases were borne by water.
Cholera, typhoid fever, dysentery and diphtheria were among the leading
causes of death - and that was true out here on the plains, too. Why,
in 1893, typhoid alone killed almost 200 people in Grand Forks.
Compounding the problem was that many waterworks - Fargo's
included - were privately owned and not very well maintained. Fargo
Water and Steam company had built a pumping station and a small dam
in Island Park in 1880. But the system delivered raw, untreated river
water though its water mains.