These two streetcars are seen at the corner of present-day Main Avenue and Broadway. Fargo's streetcars stopped running in 1937. The Forum Imagine standing in Moorhead at the corner of Main Avenue and Fourth Street, by Kirby's and Ralph's Corner bars, Pizza Patrol and the Shoe Revue. First Avenue South, as Main Avenue was called, is paved with round cedar blocks laid over fir planks. Elegant streetcars, drawing their power from suspended copper cables, rumble past.
Bicycles are the rage, sharing the roads with horses and a few early automobiles.
Railroads, which supplanted oxcarts, stagecoaches and steamships for long-distance hauling, run through town, carrying settlers and their household belongings, and agricultural products. In fact, there were few European settlers before the railroads, save a handful of Norwegian subsistence farmers. In 1870, one year before the Northern Pacific railroad brought east-west rail traffic to Moorhead, Clay County was home to 90 people. By 1875, that number had grown to 1,500. The railroads continued bringing supplies and settlers, and by 1885, the county was booming with 15,000 people.