| 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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