The Fosston County Road was not the Fosston Trail from Turtle Lake and on to Black Duck with a branch to Bemidji. The new road, which had no connection to Buena Vista, was to be cleared and to run from Popple (at the Polk County line) to Moose, now gone but located some fourteen miles west of Bemidji and four miles south of the present town of Shevlin. [Clearwater County was carved out of Beltrami County in 1903; so the early Beltrami commissioners were responsible for places like Moose, Popple, Winsor, and other settlements then in western Beltrami County.]
At their first meeting the County Commissioners were petitioned to authorize a road from just south of Moose straight to the Bemidji post office. This petition was rejected on the grounds that the commissioners feared the road would run outside of Beltrami County. It was also true that construction of such a road would duplicate the already existing Fosston Trail. Later the county did give support to the road, but the Fosston County Road from Popple to Moose to Bemidji was never the popular road from Fosston to Bemidji. The Clearwater River and Grant Creek made inconvenient, sometimes impassable obstacles.
Trees "cut even to the ground" made for terrible difficulties for those driving wagons. As the wagon wheels scraped by and rode over the stumps in the road in dry and especially in wet weather, they gradually wore the dirt away from the stumps. What had been a level road became a jolting, stump-filled obstacle course where wagons could be and were up ended. The greatest impediment in building the Fosston County Road was bridging the Clearwater River and corduroying the approaches on both sides. On January 8, 1896, this job was let to Reginus Johnson. The cost for building the bridge was $175 and corduroying on both sides was 85 cents a rod. (In other less swampy places corduroying ran as low as 50 cents a rod.) The order to pay Johnson for his work was issued August 3 seven months later, though he could have done little actual building until the frost was out of the ground.
On December 18, 1896, Commissioners Nygaard and Dudley reported the work of grading approaches to the Clearwater bridge on the Fosston road had been completed satisfactorily by Johnson; so a key part of the Fosston County Road was in place.
Resolved, that there be and hereby is appropriated out of the Road and Bridge Fund the sum of Five Hundred dollars, to be expended on the Fosston county Road between Moose and Polk county line under the direction of commissioners Allen and Nygaard. [Allen was from Moose, Nygaard from Popple.] The said commissioners shall let Said work by contract to the lowest Bider [sic] under plans and Specifications to be prepared by them, and the said commissioners shall act as and for this board in supervising and inspecting and accepting said work . . . .
Further evidence of concern for Bemidji came in the same meeting when the commissioners
Resolved that the sum of Seventy five dollars is hereby appropriated out of the Road and Bridge fund to help build a bridge across the little Mississippi on the main travelled road between Bemidji & Moose, and the commissioner of the second district is appointed a committee to let a contract for the same and to superintend its construction, and further;Resolved, That the sum of three Hundred Dollars be and the same is hereby appropriated Out of the road and Bridge fund to assist in building a Bridge across the Mississippi at Section sixteen (16) in Town 146 range 33, and that the commissioners for the first and second districts superintend the expenditure of the same, in connection with the officers of the village of Bemidji.
Although there is, as usual, no discussion or explanation in the minutes, the concerns were probably not just for traffic but for the politics of the situation. The commissioners had accepted the petition to incorporate Bemidji as a village April 25, 1896. It was the first organized village in the county. It had a large and growing population. Besides, the county had now been organized by order of the legislature. Soon there would be new officials and soon elected officials. Indeed, when the governor appointed the second group of commissioners Gordon Allen of Moose was out and Commissioner Willis Brannon of Bemidji was in. Whatever the commissioners' intent, the vote to support thoroughfares in and out of Bemidji was an acknowledgment that the political strength in the county had shifted away from the west and toward the south and east. That shift would be confirmed six months later on June 10, 1897 when the village of Bemidji was selected as the county seat.
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