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O.J. Hagen’s parents were Jens H. Hagen (1828-1914) and Gunhild Grendahl. They were married in Norway on November 5, 1855. Jens Hagen immigrated to the United States in 1869 and was followed by his wife and family in 1871. They first settled in Menominee, Wisconsin, where Olaf Jenson Hagen was born on September 16, 1872. In May 1873 the family moved to the Red River Valley, settling near Fort Abercrombie in Richland County, Dakota Territory.

Henry Peterson was born October 23, 1904, in Moorhead, Minnesota. He was the third son of Charles and Louise Peterson. Henry was born the same year that his father purchased his first 20 acre in what is now north Moorhead. Henry grew up on this farm raised by his father; his mother died when he was three years old.

Harry Basford was born at Deer River, Minnesota on May 21, 1908. He married Emma Miler on June 19, 1937. His education included grade and high school and two years of University training. He attended night school for over four years. He moved to the Wolf Lake, Minnesota area in 1941 where he operated a dairy farm.

Henry Nycklemoe was born c. 1982 in the United States. During the First World War he served in the U.S. Navy. After the war Mr. Nycklemoe became a lawyer and set up practice in Fergus Falls, Minnesota, sometime in the 1920s. During the 1930s he became a local judge.

Two reels of microfilm are the executive proceedings and official correspondence from July 1877-Decemeber 1888 of the Interior Department regarding the Dakota Territory. One reel contains letters relating to the U.S. Penitentiary in Dakota. The fourth reel contains miscellaneous materials regarding Dakota Territory.

Gust Knudson was a farmer in the area of Dazey, North Dakota. Very little is known about him beyond his obvious interest in land purchases and investments.

This collection consists of nine scrapbooks with newspaper clippings and photographs concerning housing and redevelopment in Moorhead, Minnesota. Various projects are covered in these volumes including the construction of the Brookdale Mall, urban renewal, and public housing.

In April 1997, the Red River of the North, which marks the border between North Dakota and Minnesota, flooded. The immediate effects of the flooding were well covered by the local and national media. But the long-term difficulties of rebuilding homes, businesses, and lives after the flood receded are less well known. People who live in the Red River Valley have struggled with the challenges of flood recovery, with problems rebuilding their homes, their businesses, and their sense of security.

Born in Crookston, Polk County, Minnesota in 1903, George Hagen attended St. Olaf College and studied law at Georgetown University before becoming a member of the Minnesota Bar. He also spent fourteen months as an FBI agent in Washington D.C. Hagen served in several public offices during his career, including Polk County Attorney, six years in the Minnesota House of Representatives, and many years as District Judge in Polk County.

The First Congregational Church of Detroit Lakes, Minnesota was organized in 1872 by the Reverend Hiram N. Gates. Gates was the minister of the Congregational Church in Connecticut when he received a commission from the American Home Missionary Society to establish Congregational churches in settlements along the newly constructed line of the Northern Pacific Railroad in northwestern Minnesota. Before leaving the East, Gates met Colonel George H. Johnston, who, as president of the New England Military and Naval Bureau of Migration, was in the process of establishing a colony at Detroit on lands purchased from the Northern Pacific Railroad Company (the name of the town that was to Detroit Lakes in 1926). Many of the original settlers of the “New England Colony” were Congregationalists, and Johnston convinced Gates to settle there.