Recent pictures were taken by Harley Guenther.

In the late 1860’s a group of entrepreneurs from the East Coast decided to build a railroad from Wisconsin to the Pacific Ocean. The government gave them the largest land grant in the American History. They engaged a wealthy financier, Jay Cooke, to help support the project and by 1872 the Northern Pacific Railroad crossed into North Dakota. Unfortunately, Jay Cooke’s financial institutions went bankrupt along with the NP Railroad project. The entrepreneurs decided to sell some of the land given to them by the government. One man who purchased the land was J.F. Downing from Erie, PA. He purchased 5,000 in the Richland County of ND. Bonanza farms were a common place in Richland County.

Mr. F.A. Bagg of South Hadley, Mass. came to work for his uncle, Mr. J. F. Downing on his bonanza farm at Mooreton, ND. Planning on staying for only a short while, Mr. Downing convinced him to take over the job of managing the farm after his superintendent resigned. To sweeten the deal, Mr. Downing offered him $500.00 a year and one-quarter interest in the farm, provided he would stay on as manager for at least 20 years. He agreed and stayed for 26 years. Mr. Bagg received his inheritance upon the death of Mr. Downing and in 1915, he moved his properties to the present location, 1 mile away. Mr. Bagg managed his own farm as efficiently as he had on the downing Farm and within a few years; he owned almost 6,000 acres, making the Bagg farm a bonanza farm in its own right. The Bagg farm has buildings conveying the type of wooden structures of the bonanza farming era of the 1800s and early 1900s.