Bismarck weekly tribune. [volume] (Bismarck, Dakota [N.D.]) 1884-1943, 1893-08-11

be remembered by old timers. his son
Ben Gurley being. l believe. a resident of
Fargo and Moorhead. Others we first met
here were John Mason. Jack O'Neil and
others engaged in the saloon business, who
drifted west.
office was opened here, with Judge
Reynolds as receiver and n. A. Newton of
Minneapolis as register. John Cromb, now
OF CroOkStOn, was chief clerk and in fact
seemed to do about all the work. Among
the early practitioners before this office.
We remember James G. McGrew, now Of
Crookston; 5. B. Pinney and l.. G. Steven
son. a Norwegian attorney, who seemed to
catch some pretty good fees.
About this time Lord Gordon cut a big
swath through that country in search of a
location for his colony of Scotch peasants
who failed to come, but Gordon succeeded
In swindling Jay Cooke and having a fine
time generally at the expense of the North
ern Pacific management; he too. it was
apolls to get into a ''h@ of a fix down at
Fort Garry, the following season.
But as the summer passed we saw the
graders moving west, and our tent town
gradually disappeared, until by the 1st of
November. there was nothing left at the
Gut or Oak Lake but the name, and
Berger's log buildings, to speak of. About
the last of October l think, the track
layers came along, and fourteen miles west
OF Detroit City, located a station; here we
had a postoffice called Marion. with a
station called Lakeside, but afterwards the
station and postOffice name were both
changed to Lake Park, which name it still
bears. Among the first to locate here was
4; IL. Abrams. S. 3. Pinney and Charley
Plummer, all in the mercantile business
and L.. y. Griffin in the saloon business.
The following spring we had our first
Indian scare, when John Cook, wife and
children were murdered, and their house
burned by an Indian, within two miles of
where Audubon now Sandstone night in
1 tell you it was an exciting time about
then, but we soon learned that the
Indians at White Earth, twenty miles
away, were more frightened than we, SO it
soon subsidized. The grasshoppers cleaned
up What little crop we had in '72-in "a
ditto. And just about this time l remem-
per first reading the name OF Lounsberry,
and things took a turn for the better, and
l have often thought the citizens of that
country owed the genial colonel a vote of
thanks for starting his paper so far west,
as the 'hoppers no doubt thought they
must go beyond the Missouri to get beyond
civilization, and since the colonel speaks
in his first article about "Oscar Wall" con.
SoEU6AAA AL ShO CuSCA !
with him, it reminds me that Oscar and
PIP. Wall founded and for a time pub.
iished the Audubon Journal,
Oscar, or 0. e., as he is best known. is
now at LanesborO, MIMI, and P. F., l learn
with pleasure is about to engage in a news.
paper enterprise at Cando.
But, major, l find l have already written
enough for n consignment to the waste
basket, and the more i write and the longer
l think of these scenes and recollecti0ns OF
twenty years" ago, the older and sadder ]
feel. Especially when l realize aud con.
template the change that another twenty
years must bring, 80 l will close with kind
good wishes to all who may chance to read
this, and wish the klndest recollections to
the memory Of those early pioneers, l have
mentioned, and with a firm conviction tina,
ne who shall write Forty Years Ago" fol-
the Bismarck Tribune, will write for one
OF the most prosperous and enlightened
constituencies to be found in any state OF
the American union. j. Els.
! Northwood, July q. 1893.