Grand Forks, ND news and local guide

A U.S. post office opened on June 15, 1870, under the English name Grand Forks. Alexander Griggs, a steamboat captain whose boat froze in the Red River late in 1870, forcing his crew to winter there, is regarded as the father of Grand Forks. He platted the town in 1875, and it was incorporated on February 22, 1881. Cheap land drew thousands of settlers to Dakota Territory in the 1870s and 1880s, and investors also created huge bonanza wheat farms. The city grew quickly after the Great Northern Railway arrived in 1880 and the Northern Pacific in 1887, and the University of North Dakota was founded there in 1883, six years before statehood. A tornado in 1887 killed at least six people. The state-owned North Dakota Mill and Elevator was built in the 1920s, and Grand Forks Air Force Base, chosen in 1954, brought thousands of jobs. The Red River's seasonal floods are made worse by the flat bed of an ancient lake, and the 1997 Red River flood caused extensive damage across the city. Sources Wikipedia: Grand Forks, North Dakota