NEWS for North Dakotans
Agriculture Communication, North Dakota
State University
7 Morrill Hall, Fargo, ND 58105-5665
May 14, 1998
Tom Isern, Professor of History
North Dakota State University
©1998 Plains Folk
On a gray afternoon in October 1997, winter blew into Bowesmont. Despite the north wind and the sinking mercury, no furnaces fired, no smoke snaked from the chimneys of this little town in the Red River Valley.
Not only was the town abandoned, it was in the process of dismantlement. Any building remaining was to be razed, and restrictive covenants on the property would prevent rebuilding. Bowesmont was as good as gone.
That cold, sad experience was my first view of Bowesmont, N.D. Because of the Red River floods of 1996, the town had been bought out by Pembina County with funds from the Federal Emergency Management Agency. The great flood of 1997 then had placed an exclamation point on the ongoing process of removal. As the town disappeared, my assistant Julie Humann and I came to document its history and tell its story. In doing so we enjoyed many other, happier views of Bowesmont than the first.
The deliberate dismantlement of a community is a solemn act that requires reflection. It compels questions like, Does it matter that this town was founded, grew up and perished in this place? Is its story of any interest or use to people other than those who lived here? And as for those people, how do they respond to the death of their hometown?
I've been around this block a few times, and I know the general story of the decline of country towns on the northern plains, a general story in which Bowesmont fits. Bowesmont was founded by William Bowes and Edward Brooks, storekeepers, on the west bank of the Red River, about 20 miles south of Pembina, Dakota Territory, in 1879. For the next few years its tradesmen flourished by distributing supplies carried downriver by steamboat and needed by families establishing new farms. When the Northern Pacific Railroad built its Red River & Winnipeg Branch north through the area in 1886, however, the town moved west two miles to its present site. Businesses and residences took up locations on a plat laid out the previous year by an NP surveyor. A depot, the section foreman's house, the section crew's bunkhouse, grain elevators and livestock loading chutes were the physical evidence of the dominant role of the railroad in the development of the town.
Within 20 years the population of Bowesmont was about 200, and the business section was impressive. Three grain elevators handled the produce of nearby farmers, the Bowesmont State Bank offered them credit, the hardware store sold them a line of farm implements, and a blacksmith repaired their machinery. The town had a post office and two general stores, a Methodist church, a high school, a community hall, a hotel, a barber shop, a livery, a tavern, a constable and a physician who ran a drugstore. Sometime in the first decade of the 20th century Bowesmont peaked, demographically and economically.
The town remained relatively stable through the 1920s, but it was already losing population. It only got worse during the 1930s, but until 1950 or so, although the population was only half what it had been, the town's business section held up well, its social life remained lively, and to people in the town, it still felt vital.
After that, though, Bowesmont began to collapse. Its businesses closed one by one, until by the 1980s the only one remaining was Randall Walker's garage, and it closed a few years later. The final high school commencement was that of 1959. The grade school lasted until 1967, then consolidated into Drayton. The community hall was torn down in the late 1960s. The town lost its post office in 1977. By the time of the FEMA buyout, the former community had become a mere place of residence.
Is that it, then? Is Bowesmont just one more example of the larger story of small towns on the plains? Hardly. I have more to say about that.
###
Source: Tom Isern (701) 231-8339
Editor: Barry Brissman (701) 231-7866