History of Wahpeton, ND - county seat of Richland County

Wahpeton is the county seat of Richland County and was founded in 1871.

Wahpeton's twin city is Breckenridge, Minnesota. The Bois de Sioux River and the Otter Tail River join at Wahpeton and Breckenridge to form the Red River of the North, one of the most fertile river valleys in the world. The county seat of Richland County is one of the nations largest producers of oats. Richland County ranks first in the production of soybeans, corn and hogs in North Dakota. Other crops which add to the area's economy are wheat, barley, sugarbeets and sunflowers. As the Red River flows north to Canada, it forms the state boundary between North Dakota and Minnesota. Near the river's head-waters on the bank of the Bois de Sioux is Wahpeton, North Dakota.

But Wahpeton hasn't always been the southeast gateway to North Dakota. At one time it was merely the junction of the Bois de Sioux and Otter Tail rivers which met to flow into the Red River. It was the end of the Minnesota forests and the beginning of the western plains, a place where the buffalo grass began to grow in an unbroken sweep to the Rockies.

The first explorer in the area was Jonathan Carver in 1767. He explored and mapped the Northwest at the personal request of Major Robert Rogers. Rogers was commander of Fort Michilimackinac, the British fort at Mackinaw City, Michigan which protected the passage between Lake Michigan and Lake Huron. Carver's mission was to find the Northwest passage, the imaginary waterway to the Orient which Rogers was convinced existed. While Carver failed in his search, the passing years saw many fur traders and explorers pass through the area.

More than one hundred years after the Carver expedition, a Government surveying party passed through the Wahpeton area. J. W. Blanding, a member of the expedition was so impressed by the fertile river valley that he returned to his Wisconsin home determined to move his family and belongings to the Dakota Territory. Blanding so influenced other Wisconsin settlers that many of them arrived and homesteaded in the Wahpeton area before Blanding could return.

The first settler was Morgan T. Rich. His plow turned the first furrow of rich black bottomland in 1869. When other settlers arrived, they formed a tiny community and quite naturally named it Richville. An apt name considering its founder and the fertile quality of the soil.

In 1871, a Post Office was opened. At the same time, the town's name was changed to "Chahinkapa" an Indian name meaning "the end of the woods." Two years later, the county was organized and called Chahinkapa County. Later that year the county was renamed Richland County and the town of Chahinkapa renamed Wahpeton. Credit for suggesting the name Wahpeton is given to an early settler named William Cooper. Wahpeton is a contraction of the Indian name "Warpeotonwe" meaning "Leaf Village".

Growth of the village of Wahpeton was quite slow during the first few years. But a flurry of activity was created in 1872 when the St. Paul and Pacific Railway (now the Great Northern) extended a line into Breckenridge, Minnesota, a tiny community just across the Bois de Sioux River. This created a booming business in flat boat building in both Breckenridge and Wahpeton. Flat boats could carry freight directly from the railroad down river to northern North Dakota and all the way to Winnipeg.

At the same time, the railroad opened up the area to many more settlers. Germans, Bohemians, Scandinavians and native Americans moved to Richland County to file homesteads. Wahpeton was growing. And in 1874, Jacob Morvin and Joseph Sittarich opened the first retail store in the county. By 1876 the traffic between Wahpeton and Breckenridge had grown to where the local ferry could not handle it and a bridge was built across the Bois de Sioux River connecting the two towns.

Another flurry of growth was realized in 1880 when the St. Paul, Minneapolis and Manitoba Railroad crossed the river and pushed its tracks on toward the north-west. A few years later, in 1883, the population of Wahpeton was estimated to be as high as 1,400 people.

As the county seat, Wahpeton was the center of all activity. Here was the courthouse, the bank and the first flour mills. In 1889 the Red River Valley University was established later to become the North Dakota State School of Science.

As the century came to a close, Wahpeton had settled down into a hard-working agricultural community. Its frontier had, years before, passed further west.

In 1904 the United States Government established the Wahpeton Indian School for the Education of Indian Children from northern Minnesota, North Dakota and northern South Dakota.

Through the Twenties and Thirties, Wahpeton continued to grow, develop and to keep pace with the rest of the nation. It has been through this half of the Twentieth Century that the Red River Valley has earned its reputation as one of the richest agricultural belts in the nation. [Source: Wikipedia.org]