THE FARGO-MOORHEAD RIVERFRONT

Steamboat traffic began on the Red River June 8, 1859, when the Anson Northup set out on her maiden voyage bound for Fort Garry. But it wasn’t until the NP Railroad reached the river in 1871 that river commerce really came into its own. Railroad spurs reached from the mainline down to both the Moorhead and Fargo river banks. Goods bound for Grand Forks and Winnipeg were loaded directly from railroad cars onto the steamboats. In the 1880s, the Alsop Brothers Line based two famous steamers, the Pluck and the H. W. Alsop, on the Moorhead side. The Grandin Farms based their J. L. Grandin on the Fargo side. These and several other boats plied the Fargo-Moorhead reach of the river for over 20 years, until the spreading railroad put them out of business in the mid-1880s.