Bill's Custom Painting in Grand Forks

Grand Forks is the oldest major city in The Dakotas. Prior to settlement by Europeans, the area where the city now sits (at the forks of the Red River and Red Lake River) had been an important meeting and trading point for Native Americans. Early French explorers, fur trappers, and traders called the area “Les Grandes Fourches” (meaning “The Grand Forks”). By the 1740s, Les Grandes Fourches was an important rendezvous point for French fur trappers. This French fur trade continued until the French and Indian War gave Canada to the British. In 1800, British fur trader Alexander Henry the Younger, an agent for the North West Company of Montreal, located a temporary camp at Les Grandes Fourches and, in 1808, established a permanent post. By the 1820s, the Hudson’s Bay Company and John Jacob Astor’s American Fur Company also had operations at the site.

During the mid-19th century, Les Grandes Fourches was a stopping-off point for the Red River ox carts which carried goods on the Red River Trails between St. Paul, Minnesota and Fort Garry (now Winnipeg, Manitoba). On June 15, 1870, the first post office was opened, and “Les Grandes Fourches” was anglicized to “Grand Forks”. Unlike most cities in North Dakota, the city of Grand Forks does not owe its existence to the arrival of the railroad. Instead, Grand Forks was first an important steamboat port on the Red River of the North. In late 1870, a steamboat captained by Alexander Griggs froze in the Red River at Grand Forks, and Griggs and his men were forced to remain there for the rest of the winter. They built a temporary shed to live in for the winter and Griggs seemed to have decided that the area would be a good spot for a town. In the spring, he claimed a nine-acre (36,000 m²) piece of property that would become the townsite and, ultimately, downtown Grand Forks.