Fargo - North Dakota

Fargo, North Dakota

Fargo is the largest city in North Dakota with a population recently polled at over 95,000. Despite a major fire in 1893 and a serious tornado in 1957, the city bounced back vigorously. After the fire, 246 new buildings sprang up within the space of one year. In the last century, the tornado provided the occasion for a tornado scientist, Dr. Ted Fujita, who originated the Fujita Scale, to develop early descriptive terms for tornado phenomena.

Fargo got its start as a stopover point for steamboats using the Red River in the 1870s and '80s and later profited from the arrival of the railways, becoming known as the Gateway to the West. By this time, Fargo had developed a more dubious moniker as the divorce capital of the Midwest, thanks to its lenient divorce laws.

Fargo is closely associated with Moorhead, Minnesota and these two cities form the Fargo-Moorhead ND-MN Metropolitan Statistical Area. Fargo is a hub for culture, retail and manufacturing activity, health care and education for this region.

Fargo-Moorhead Opera
Fargo-Moorhead Symphony Orchestra and Youth Symphony
Fargo winter carnival
Plains Art Museum
Children's Museum at Yunker Farm
six golf courses, three of them with 9 holes, three with 18 holes
Red River Zoo
Bonanzaville Fargo, historic buildings and artifacts
Maple River Winery