It’s our church’s 25th anniversary this October, and some of the church ladies are putting together a scrapbook of sorts to commemorate the occasion. I decided to investigate the history of the building where our church is located, as it’s very old. I didn’t know how old.
The building, which doesn’t look quite like the NDSHS photo above, has been around for a long, long time. I’ve spent some time in the county archives and am piecing together a complete history. Here are some interesting facts I’ve found:
The railroad was apparently granted a pretty big easement on either side of the tracks when it came through here; the land the church sits on, on 7th and Avenue C, is in the Northern Pacific 2nd Addition part of town. The land was transferred from the railroad to a number of private owners until Trinity Lutheran Church purchased it in 1912 and built a church there. That church was later sold in 1926 and has changed hands many times since. It became Open Door Baptist Church in 1981 (thus the 25th anniversary) and I’m still filling in the gaps therebetween. I can tell so far that it has been a 7th Day Adventists church, a Menonnite Brethren church, and at least two different Baptist churches.
My searches on the computer only got me so far back; from there I switched to microfilm cards, and those got me back a little further. But the most interesting (and time consuming) work has been flipping pages in the huge old 120-year-old books in the county archives. Talk about neat! I went from my adventures in a nanotechnology center Thursday to handling books from the 1800s on Friday. What a week.
Here are some other interesting Bismarck facts I have dug up recently:
Bismarck was originally named Edwinton, named after Edwin Johnson of Vermont. He was the man who came up with the suggestion for a transcontinental railroad.
They changed the name to Bismarck to try to get Otto von Bismarck to kick in some venture capital and invest in the railroad, the lifeblood of the city.
Bismarck became the territorial capitol by offering land and cash — $100,000 and 160 acres. Logically, it then became North Dakota’s capitol when we achieved statehood. I was on assignment last week with some guys from the federal government, and they asked Governor Hoeven about the capitol site…at that time, someone from the state came up with a slightly smaller number than 160 acres. Some of it may have been portioned off for other uses.
Some names you might find familiar if you read street signs:
– Sweet and Bowen were to engineers who worked on the layout of the city in its early planning stages.
– Grant Marsh wasn’t a bridge, he was the captain of the Far West riverboat, ferrying people and cargo across the Missouri River.
– Alexander McKenzie owned the hotel that later became the Patterson, on 5th and Main.
– John Yegen owned a bakery on Main Avenue, and it’s now an attraction at Buckstop Junction east of Bismarck.
– Belle Mehus was a Bismarck piano teacher for many years.
Did you know that the CAT isn’t the first bus system that Bismarck had? Or that a trolley ran up 4th street from Main Avenue to the Capitol? Or that, during the railroad’s heyday, Bismarck was called “the wickedest town in America” due to its saloons and rowdy passers-through?
These and a lot of other facts and photos are out there if you just hunt around. For instance, the walls at the Peacock Alley have lots of old photos of downtown Bismarck. I highly recommend a book titled “Images of America: Bismarck, North Dakota” by local author Cathy Langemo, from which the above names are taken. She seems to have done some really fun research and compiled some photos as well. The book’s ISBN number is 0-7385-2000-4 and it can be found in the local interest section of Barnes & Noble.
