Bonanza Farms: Beginning of the Boom
When President Lincoln signed the Homestead Act of 1862, Americans could snatch 160 acres of land in the “Wild West” for little cost when committing to a 5-year residency. So began the settlement of the West, as men and women sought “the means and opportunity of benefiting [their] condition” in the wild lands. The influx of European Americans to the Dakota Territory accelerated through the end of the 19th century, and the era of big-time agriculture began.
As the Northern Pacific Railway sold huge swaths of land to settle its debts, bankers, investors and businessmen from the eastern part of the US capitalized on the idea of cheap land a monster farms, creating the Bonanza Farming phenomenon. The first Bonanza Farm was established in 1874, after NP President George Cass and Benjamin Cheney, another railroad official, bought 13,000 acres near Casselton. Oliver Dalrymple, who was hired to manage the farm and eventually obtained all the land, became the farm’s namesake. Like all Bonanzas, Dalrymple’s required a vast array of laborers and fleets of equipment— seeders, binders, harrows, plows, threshers, wagons, mowers, etc.—and countless horses and mules. In 1880, Dalrymple’s total work force for all of his farming tasks consisted of 800 men and hundreds of horses.
Bonanza Farms capitalized on the incredible fertility of the Red River Valley, producing massive quantities of wheat and reaping in large sums of money. By the 1890s, Dalrymple and his family had expanded their Bonanza operation to more than 100,000 acres in present-day North Dakota and Minnesota, using incredible man and horse power (quite literally) to plow, plant and harvest each year. At one time, the Dalrymple was the largest cultivated farm in the world.
The Grandin brothers from Pennsylvania started their own Bonanza Farm in 1876, their 75,000 acres of land located near Mayville and Hillsboro. The Dwight Farm in southeast North Dakota was around 27,000 acres, one of its owners John Miller, the first governor of the state.
The Amenia and Sharon Land Company, incorporated in 1875, was created by stockholders living in New York and Connecticut, the largest stockholder Eben W. Chaffee. He went to Dakota Territory to select the land and secured almost 28,000 acres west of Fargo along the railroad. He managed the operation each summer, eventually moving his family to North Dakota permanently. The towns of Amenia and Chaffee were established thanks to the Chaffee Bonanza Farm. The later manager of the company, Eben Chaffee’s son Herbert, died in the sinking of the Titanic.
Bonanza Farms implemented ever-improving technology, large labor forces, built grain elevators and lobbied for their towns to receive railway offshoots for easier freight transport. In addition to Amenia and Chaffee, the towns of Steele, Carrington, Blanchard, Cleveland, Clifford, Ayr, Edgeley and Tower City were each established and named by or for Bonanza Farms and managers.
Barnes County
Bonanzas
Charlemagne Tower, of Philadelphia, bought sections of NP land in North Dakota, his 58 sections in Barnes County stretching fifteen miles along the railway’s main line. Valley City Banker B.W. Benson handled some sales for Tower and served as the attorney for NP Land Commissioner James Power’s, who is credited for launching the Bonanza Boom.
Brothers Major, D.H. and John Butz owned over 36,000 acres in Ransom, LaMoure and Barnes counties, which they purchased later in the game than most Bonanza Farmers. Even so, they found success. Their construction of a warehouse to house 45,000 bushels in 1882 near the NP tracks led to the establishment of the town of Buttsville.
In western Barnes County, the Craig Farm was considerably smaller than surrounding Bonanza Farms, but with 3,000+ acres was still classified as such and remained a huge undertaking at that time.
Another was the Kindred farm north of Valley City (later called the Nestor Farm), owned by C. F. Kindred and located on the upland prairie. The farm’s 5,000 acres and collection of buildings formed an operation the size of a village. Kindred was originally from Brainerd, Minnesota, and started Valley City’s first bank in the early 1880s. On his 19-section farm, Kindred also raised horses. VC Commerce 1882: “Over 75 head of horses, many with as fine blood as any in the country, are kept here, and a splendid race course has been constructed, and other arrangements perfected, with special view of raising fine blooded stock, and preparing them to compete successfully on the race courses of the country.”
Come West; Find Success
These farms helped
further settle the area in a number of ways. Groups of migrant laborers often decided to relocate to the prairie permanently, rather than heading south after each harvest.
Images and information from the farms were also advertised throughout the nation and even overseas to show citizens of the success there was to be had if they settled in the West.
One of the most visible advertisements for the West’s farming opportunities came when the Amenia & Sharon Land Company farm was featured on a 2-cent US Postage stamp in 1898. The photograph captured twenty-two plow gangs and 61 horses who were assembled to make quick work of replanting in 1888. They were already partway through the growing season that summer when the first batch had been ruined by hail.
This appearance was the first time a photo of living people had been used on a US postage stamp, and it was the government’s hope that displaying this show of power on farms in Dakota Territory would attract more settlers. More than 150 million of these stamps were issued, and they attracted the attention of the public all over the country. In fact, many people were vocal in their astonishment— it was unfathomable that such a massive force of machinery and horses was in operation at any one farm in the nation.
Later, that stamp was chosen to be part of the new state of North Dakota’s exhibit at the 1893 World’s Fair in Chicago, where it was displayed as an enlarged 14x22 photo. Nearly 26 million people visited the World Fair that year, no doubt inspiring individuals to try their hand at farming in the Dakotas after seeing the Amenia & Sharon Land company’s photo.
Better Life on the Prairie
Because of the vast amount of equipment these operations required, implement manufacturers sprang up all over the area to help meet the needs of these farms. As towns and other businesses grew around Bonanza Farms, entities brought their technology and developments to the location that was booming. The railroad brought telegraph lines that farms and eventually towns utilized to connect themselves to the outside world. The first telephone lines in North Dakota were installed at the Grandin Farm. Frame homes were constructed for wealthy managers and superintendents at the farms, setting a new example of comfortable living on the prairie.
As Bonanza Farms grew wheat in the eastern part of the state, cattle bonanzas developed in the west. Cattle first arrived in the Dakotas as a source of meat for sol
From 2 diers occupying military forts there. As the railroad marched westward, settlers followed and found prime ranch land in the west. It was a perfect area for grazing, ripe with canyons and gullies for shelter and water.
In eastern Dakota ter
ritory, Bonanza Farms in the 1880s began raising cattle, sheep and pigs, both for their fertilizer and to help feed the large crews who ran the farm. To sustain their livestock, they also began to dedicate space to other crops like oats, barley and hay.
Bonanza Farm leadership created ways to
keep track of markets, began rotating crops and documenting soilbuilding plans, mapping the farms’ sections and recording exact records of plants and yields—it was the dawn of efficient farming.
End of an Era
The reign of the Bonanza was short, but impactful. Large farms
met multiple obstacles that led to their decline and eventual demise, like drought, loss of soil nutrients, stunted yield and profit loss. Crop and livestock diversification and increasing problems in finding labor made it more profitable for Bonanza Farmers to divide the land into smaller sections, either selling or leasing land to other farmers. By 1920, most of the large-scale farm operations in the area had ceased.
But the Bonanza had put the Dakotas on the map. The area was by then well-known as an agricultural region full of opportunity, and settlers continued flocking to the new state.
The only remaining Bonanza Farm complex that remains intact in North Dakota is that which Frederick and Sophia Bagg established near Mooreton. Fields, residential and farmrelated outbuildings remain onsite as part of the National Historic Landmark, which now operates as a museum.