Northern Pacific spent $715,000 to make Dilworth its new division terminal, including $284,000 on this 45-stall roundhouse to store and repair steam engines. The homes on the north side of Dilworth can be seen in the distance. This photo taken around 1907 was taken from on top of a coal dock in the railyard. Clay County Historical Society archives

A rich ethnic tradition
Railroad work lures Italians, Greeks, Albanians to Dilworth
By Karyn Spencer
The Forum

The wind howling through Dilworth's Little Italy neighborhood nearly drowned out the knock on the door in the middle of the night.

"You've got to come," the callboy said as he went door to door, rousting railroad workers from their beds in an era before telephones.

The Italian section laborers bundled themselves in sheepskin jackets, woolen hats and horsehide chopper mitts before trudging through the blizzard to the railyard.

Armed with kerosene lamps called hay burners so engineers could see them, the workers cleared the railroad switches with shovels and "stubs," skinny worn-out brooms to clean narrow spots.

Water constantly coursed off the steam engines, sometimes freezing them to the tracks, and the men chipped them free by hand with picks.



The Lady of Monte Carmelo Society organized a summertime Italian celebration that drew thousands to Little Italy. Society members are (back row) Leonard Bell, Salvatore Papasergia, Bruno Suppa, Joe Varriano, Nick Bava, Biaso Pardino, Tony Santucci, Mike Verdi, Louie Luvachuni, Sam Frisco, Mike DiAllasandro, Leo Poliseno, Frank Costello, (front row) John Annalora, Nutsi Costello, Dominic Boit, Tony Altobell, Pete Clemente, Father Gans, Dan DiBrito, Frank Angelo, Mike Clemente, Otto Varilla, Sam Schuvati. Clay County Historical Society archives

Dilworth was built on the backs of these immigrants and the back-breaking labor of the railroad.

By moving its division terminal four miles east of Fargo, Northern Pacific Railway created the city of Dilworth and lured Italian, Greek and Albanian immigrants to work for the railroad for 10 to 20 cents
an hour.

As the only residents on the south side of the tracks, their ethnic neighborhood earned the name Little Italy.

It was also called Shuttashot, a name romanticized in some histories of the town as the name of the first Italian settler. But the four Italians who still live in Little Italy say they were told the name meant "shanty town."

Their homes were modest, either built by the immigrants out of tarpaper and lumber from the railroad or built by the railroad and sold to the families.

The houses weren't much, explains Louis Costello, 85, one of the four Italians left in the neighborhood. "They were just something to get out of the weather," he says.

The families saved railroad ties to chop into fuel for their
wood-burning stoves. They hauled water by hand from a
neighborhood well, but for washing clothes, they'd take their boilers to the roundhouse to fill with 170-degree water normally used to wash engines.

The water laced with lime and soda ash to prevent rust on the locomotives kept clothes extra white. "If you left them in there more than three minutes, you'd just have shreds," laughs Costello.

The neighborhood became a curiosity to outsiders, who flocked by the thousands to Little Italy's annual festival Our Lady of Monte Carmelo from 1912 to 1942.


Railroad workers pose in the Dilworth railyard in 1940. The railyard was built because the steam locomotives needed to be refilled with water and coal every 100 miles. Clay County Historical Archives.

The men built a grandstand for area bands out of lumber donated by the railroad. Women staged boxing matches before the men's fights began.

Perhaps the oddest and most popular event was the "slippery pole."

"At the top of the greased pole, which naturally became more sloppery with each attempt, were prizes, usually, salami, sausages, Italian cheeses, a bottle of wine and a $10 cash prize," The Red River Scene newspaper wrote.

More often, residents of Little Italy found more modest forms of entertainment.

The drainage ditch between the neighborhood and the railroad tracks became the children's playground. In winter, they'd sled down the sides on cardboard scraps and skate on the icy bottom.

During warmer weather, curious kids occasionally slipped into the water. When the Verdi children got soaked, they'd run to Great-Grandma's house, recalls 72-year-old Marie (Verdi) Bedore, a lifetime Little Italy resident.

Grandma would dry their clothes and fill their chilled bodies with coffee and toasted homemade bread before sending them home looking respectable. "No tell your mother," she'd warn.

Their great-grandmother was one of several Italian women sought for home remedies and reported healing powers.

When a young Costello complained of a headache, one of the women rubbed his forearm and muttered prayers before retrieving a saucer. She poured water into the dish and then drizzled olive oil on top.

Following a common practice among these women, she would "read" the pattern made by the olive oil much like tea leaves, and declared the boy was not seriously ill. The next day, Costello's headache was gone.

But as much as the city still boasts of its ethnic background, there are few Italians left.


Two of Dilworth's notable citizens are shown working in the post office in about 1938. The late C.J. "Doc" Fitzgerald was the city's postmaster for 41 years. He started in 1936 as a political appointee when the mail was transported by train for a 3-cent stamp. Postal clerk Marie (McGuinness) DiBrito was the first non-Italian to marry an Italian, Joe DiBrito, in Dilworth, a controversy at the time. Courtesy of Russ Fitzgerald.

In the 1990 census, only 64 residents reported Italian ancestries. That puts it ninth on the list of Dilworth's heritages, barely ahead of Czech. Like much of the region, the city is home mostly to Germans (1,183) and Norwegians (896).

Italian women started the spaghetti dinner 60 years ago at St. Elizabeth's Catholic Church, but the chief organizer now is German-Russian.

While the number of Italians decreased, so did the city's ties to the railroad, forever altered as transportation changed.

In the late 1930s, 90 percent of Dilworth residents worked for the railroad.

As automobiles were invented and modernized, trips to
Fargo-Moorhead became more convenient, and people found jobs outside of Dilworth.

By 1958, the percentage of Dilworth residents working for the railroad had dropped to 50 percent. Today only 1 percent work through the local railyard.

Railroad history remains prominent in Dilworth. The city's logo features a locomotive, and Whistle Stop Park along Highway 10 includes a retired steam engine and an old depot renovated into a community building.

But the quick drive to nearby cities allowed Dilworth to craft a niche as a bedroom community, catering to people who prefer a house in a smaller town and their children in a smaller school.

Ninety years after immigrants bought houses in Little Italy for $500 to $800, new residents spend an average of $125,000 to build in the Kroshus Estates housing development on the northwest corner of town.

Tom Dubbels and his wife, Lisa, bought a house in Kroshus two years ago after he was hired as a counselor at Northwest Technical College in Moorhead.

"It's younger families," says the 30-year-old father of two. "The neighbors are at our same stage in life, having kids, kind of establishing themselves."

And they chose to establish themselves in a city of 2,500. "You can go to church, you can go around town, you can see people that you know," Dubbels says.

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Green with envy
Steiger tractors a mainstay for
area farmers
By Jonathan Knutson
The Forum

They say necessity is the mother of invention.

You can make that case for the big and bright-green Steiger tractor. Invented 40 years ago by two brothers who needed a more powerful tractor, Steiger tractors have become a mainstay for many farmers - and a boon to the Fargo-Moorhead manufacturing sector.

The familiar green of Steiger's Cougar 1000 tractor at work.

Steiger tractors "certainly have had an impact on agriculture," said Vern Hofman, an associate professor of agricultural engineering at North Dakota State University.

The powerful tractors allow farmers to pull bigger loads and consequently to increase the acreage of their operations, he said.

Producing the big tractors has been a big business in Fargo for three decades.

At Steiger Tractor Inc.'s peak in the 1970s, upwards of 1,100 people worked in the company's Fargo plant. That was roughly 3 percent of the community's total non-farm work force at the time.

The plant now employees about 500 people to produce four-wheel-drive tractors.

The story of Steiger tractors began modestly, in a dairy barn near Red Lake Falls, Minn.

Brothers Douglass and Maurice Steiger needed a powerful four-wheel-drive tractor for their farming operation near Red Lake Falls. No existing models were adequate to their needs.

So in the winter of 1957-1958, they manufactured one in the family dairy barn. The 15,000-pound tractor - made mostly from salvaged parts - was powered by a 238-horsepower Detroit Diesel engine, which gave the tractor much more power than other tractors on the market.

"We fool around with iron, you know. We like iron and the business end of it. We like both," Maurice Steiger said in a 1973 interview.

Neighboring farmers liked the tractor and requested a "Steiger" of their own. The brothers accommodated as many of the requests as they could, all the while making changes and improvements to the original model.

About 125 tractors were built on the farm, with about 20 people employed in their manufacture.

In 1969 the Steigers incorporated the business and moved their manufacturing facilities to Fargo.

Les Melroe of Winner, N.D., an experienced North Dakota manufacturer, liked what he saw in the fledgling Steiger Tractor Inc. So Melroe bought stock in the company and helped to assemble a professional management team, led by Gene Dahl,
chairman of the board, and Jack Johnson, president.

In 1969 the Series I Steiger tractors hit the market. They had names like Wildcat, Super Wildcat, Bearcat, Cougar and Tiger.

Customers liked the tractors. Annual sales topped $20 million in 1973. The company's annual report that year said the company had overcome "its initial start-up problems and growing pains" and was on the brink of rapid growth.

Indeed, it was. A new 420,000-square-foot plant was completed in 1975, and annual sales hit $82 million.

In 1977 annual sales hit $104 million. In 1979 the plant turned out it 10,000 tractor.

An article in the March 1977 issue of Fortune magazine praised the company and its growth.

But Steiger's boom went bust in the 1980s. With the worldwide farm economy struggling, Steiger inevitably sold fewer tractors.

In 1986, when the plant was operating at only 25 percent of capacity, the company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. Chapter 11 gives a debtor relief from payments to creditors for a period of time while the company attempts to reorganize its
business.

"Steiger is suffering from the prolonged depressed industry," Irv Aal,
the company's president and chief executive officer, said at the time.

Later in 1986, Tenneco Inc., the parent of Case, bought the company.

Steiger officials said selling the company was painful but necessary.

The Fargo plant continues to produce four-wheel-drives under the Steiger name. However, the tractors are now painted Case red instead of Steiger green. Case officials say they're proud of and committed to maintaining the Steiger tradition.

In 1997, the Fargo plant built its 40,000th four-wheel drive tractor under the Steiger name.

Jack Johnson, a former company president, in 1997 estimated that the plant had produced more than $2 billion in four-wheel-drive tractors through the years.

The plant once produced tractors for the Allis-Chalmers, Ford and former International-Harvester brand names, in addition to its own Steiger tractors. When those other tractors are included, it's estimated that the plant has produced about 50,000 four-wheel-drive units.

Only a handful of state-run plants in totalitarian countries are believed to have produced more.

Steiger officials have always stressed the high quality of their four-wheel-drive tractors. Hofman said Steiger tractors have a well-deserved reputation for reliability.

Though Steiger tractors haven't been painted green in more than a decade, the big, bright green machines are still widely used.

"They're good, well-built machines with the correct design," Hofman said. "With proper maintenance, they'll be around for a while longer."

Dilworth Timeline

Northern Pacific built this hotel - nicknamed the Red Onion because of its red paint - to house workers until the town could be developed. Shown in this photo from 1908, the hotel was at the present Main Street and Second Avenue Southwest. The hotel was removed in 1933, but some old-timers still refer to the nearby spot where Main Street crosses the railroad tracks as Hotel Crossing. Courtesy of Dilworth City Hall

1906 Named in honor Northern Pacific Railway’s director, Dilworth had been a small station for 23 years before NP moved its division terminal there from Fargo.

1907 The Dilworth Post Office opens.

1907-8 Dilworth Presbyterian Church is built on Main Street, now Highway 10, and it remains as one of the town’s oldest buildings.

1909 As the number of students climbs to 93, a new four-room wooden school is built for $3,965. The old school is converted into a home.

1911 With 594 residents, Dilworth is incorporated as a village.

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