| Devils Lake was established
by Heber M Creel in 1882, and secured a connection to James J
Hill's Great Northern Railroad line to Minneapolis. The area
"boomed' as American, Canadian and European immigrants poured into the
area and established an economy based largely on agriculture. The
boom was triggered by the fortuitous combination of free (or
inexpensive) farm land, the development of new strains of spring wheat
especially suited to the area's climate and the particular demands of
flour millers, and the opening of rail transportation to the
Minneapolis flour mills.
The sixty-five wood-frame buildings which
comprised the first commercial district were destroyed by fire in 1884.
After the fire, new commercial buildings were required to have brick
and stone exteriors. The buildings that make up the current
historic district were built between 1885 and 1937.
Six of the properties survive from the pre-1900 period,
including the Independent Order of Odd Fellows (IOOF) Building (1885),
which is the oldest in the district. Most of the properties were
built during the Second Dakota Boom (1900 - 1915) and the post
boom period (1916 - 1937). Major historic
influences for these later periods include a second influx of
immigrants after the opening of parts of the Fort Totten Indian
Reservation to private land acquisition in 1904, the growth of
Devils Lake as a commercial center and railroad hub, and the adoption
of automobiles for local transportation.
Although the properties in the district are
primarily two-story brick and stone buildings, a variety of
architectural styles are represented. Attention to stylistic
details and adherence to common architectural themes were outweighed by
the urgency of assuring functional and fire-resistant commercial
buildings. The most common building material was brick from the
Red River Valley Brick Company of Grand Forks. Consequently, the
Devils Lake Commercial District demonstrated the melding of popular
eastern design trends with the functional needs of a boom town economy,
expressed in locally available materials.
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