Follow
Please add profiles of those who were born, lived or died in Emmons County, North Dakota.
The county was created by the Dakota Territory legislature on February 10, 1879. It was named for James A. Emmons (1845–1919), a steamboat operator and early Bismarck merchant and entrepreneur.
The first non-Native settlers of Emmons County came from Europe and the eastern United States. The earliest were mostly soldiers discharged from Fort Yates, but civilians began arriving in the 1880s. Two large ethnic groups soon developed: Germans from both Russia and Germany (the latter called Reich Germans) and Hollanders who had come from the eastern United States. The Hollanders lived only in the southwestern part of the county while the Germans settled throughout the area.
The settlers faced hardships in Emmons County, particularly the adverse climate with its extreme seasonal variations in temperature, wind, rain, and snow. Winter blizzards, summer thunderstorms, and tornadoes were a constant threat. Early settlers built crude dwellings using available materials. The first building in Emmons county was a log cabin built near present-day Winona (1852). Other dwellings used tar paper or local rocks. Rocks were a common sight on the prairie, but stone houses were a rarity because they took great care to build. The most common type of dwelling was the sod house, which later became synonymous with pioneering life on the prairie. Sod is prairie grass and dirt cut into blocks and stacked to form walls. Sod was an effective solution to the problem of limited lumber availability. These crude dwellings were eventually abandoned in favor of more modern homes as soon as the necessary building materials became available.
Another hardship was transportation. There were no roads and the nearest railroad station was in Eureka, South Dakota (40 miles away). A horse and wagon were typically used for transportation. Piles of buffalo bones were used as landmarks to aid navigating the vast prairie. Since no bridges existed, creeks and streams presented a major difficulty. Settlers usually traveled in pairs and used both of their teams of horses to pull each wagon across a creek or stream. The first bridge in Emmons County was built in 1889.
The Missouri River forms the county's western boundary. Some settlers earned a living by providing cordwood to the river's steamboats in the summer (river ice halted the boats in wintertime). Ferries moved people and goods across the river, and barges were used to move goods along the river.
The county's first town that still exists was Braddock, established in 1898. A railroad line was laid to Braddock in 1898. Linton was platted in 1899 near the county center, to create a county seat. Tirsbol was established in 1902 ten miles south of Linton. It became the center of the German immigrant community and was renamed Strasburg. Also in 1902, the town of Hague was established southeast of Strasburg, and Hazelton was platted near Williamsport.
Adjacent Counties
- Burleigh County
- Kidder County
- Morton County
- Campbell County, South Dakota
- McIntosh County
- Corson County, South Dakota
- Sioux County
- Logan County
Cities, Townships & Communities
- Braddock
- Buchanan Valley (defunct)
- Campbell
- Emmonsburg
- Glencoe
- Godkin (now Temvik)
- Hague
- Hazelton
- Kintyre
- Lincoln
- Linton (County Seat)
- Livona
- McCulley
- Strasburg
- Tell
- Westfield
- Williamsport
- Winchester
- Winona
Cemeteries
Links
Long Lake National Wildlife Refuge (part)
Newspaper Archives (1884-1922)
Germans From Russia Heritage Society
