Timeline: 1900s

1900

1901

1902

  • Doctors Quain and Ramstad open a clinic, the precursor to Medcenter One (now Sanford)
  • Partnership between Arthur Lucas and William O’Hara is dissolved, leaving Lucas sole owner of A.W. Lucas & Company (June 30)
  • Bismarck establishes a new ordinance governing the assignment of street names and building numbers (July). The ordinance establishes principles that are largely in tact today, including designating the north/south/east/west boundaries and the base numbering system.
  • Soo Railroad reaches Bismarck (August)
  • The first motion picture is shown at The Antheneum – a stage house erected in 1880. The show was put on by the traveling Beaty Brothers using 6 projectors.

1904

  • State-owned streetcar line is completed connecting downtown with the State Capitol; it was disestablished in 1931

1905

  • Construction begins on the Will School (closed in 1951)
  • The International Harvester Building is completed (now L.J. Anderson Building)
  • Bismarck’s last capital execution takes place at the penitentiary. The practice is outlawed in 1915.
  • Original superstructure of the Northern Pacific Railway bridge is replaced with steel that can handle heavier loads. The original granite piers, which still support the bridge to this day, were also shored up.

1906

  • Modern brick building for Grand Pacific Hotel is completed (demolished in 1974)
  • The beginnings of the Bismarck-Mandan Chamber of Commerce is founded as The Bismarck Commercial Club.

1907

  • Bismarck Indian School is established at the former site of Milwaukee Brewery, now Fraine Barracks… home of North Dakota’s National Guard. The school was approved by an act of Congress in 1901 and opens in 1908. It becomes an all-girls school in 1922 and closes in 1937.
  • Quain & Ramstad’s clinic is reorganized to become Bismarck Evangelical Hospital, the precursor to Medcenter One (now Sanford)

1909

  • New Bismarck Evangelical Hospital officially opens
  • A brick structure is erected at the corner of 2nd and Broadway. It is used as an armory for the National Guard and as the city’s first public gymnasium.