Grand Forks County ND County Records & History OJATA History Grand Forks Hearld, Sept. 22,1916 NAME OF OJATA EXPLAINED To the editor: I have often wondered how the wayside railway station of Ojata , just west of Grand Forks, got its name. The name is a Sioux Indian word meaning the forks of the stream or the division of water as one goes upstream and how this name came to attatch itself to a place on the prairie has been a mystery to me. Today Colonel Mclaughlin of Washington gave me this explanation. He said:" In 1878 I had established the road from Fort Tottten to Grand Forks. Then when James J. Hill was building the railway west from Grand Forks he asked me to name the first station west of Grand Forks. He said he expected to build the railway as far west as the Turtle River at once and the first station west of Grand Forks would be there. The survey crossed the the river where the water divided, flowing both south and north. I gave the place the Sioux name Ojata. As it happened he got the railway out only a few miles and there was a halt for some reason and my name intended for the place where the water divides attatched itself to a locality where there is no water at all." A. Beede., Bismark,ND Submitted by Ralph Richardson   ©2009Genealogy Trails Submitters retain all copyrights to their data!