Where to Stay in Grand Forks, North Dakota

What is Grand Forks known for?

Water off the Red River overwhelmed Grand Forks and East Grand Forks together, and the recovery that followed is the single event most outsiders can attach to the city. Farming supplies the rest. Wheat and sugar beets come off the surrounding fields of Grand Forks County, while the North Dakota Museum of Art gives the place a cultural address that neither Fargo nor Bismarck can quite match.

What are the main landmarks in Grand Forks?

Nine entries make the register. The North Dakota Museum of Art is the one address a visitor would cross the state for, and Memorial Stadium and Harold Kraft Memorial Field carry the sporting half of the list between them. Houses take four places.

The Dr. Henry Wheeler House, the Harriet and Thomas Beare House, the Thomas D. Campbell House and the House at 1648 Riverside Drive record the households of the early streets, while United Lutheran Church and St. Michael's Church close it out.

What is the history of Grand Forks?

Grand Forks dates from 1870. The settlement grew where the Red River gave traffic a reason to stop, and the county that took its name from the place has run its business from here ever since. Farming set the terms.

Wheat and sugar beets off the flat ground around the town paid for the early streets, and the houses that survive from that period, the Dr. Henry Wheeler House and the Harriet and Thomas Beare House and the Thomas D. Campbell House, belonged to the families who profited first. The flood of 1997 is the dividing line. Water from the Red River came through Grand Forks and East Grand Forks at once, and the rebuilding that followed reshaped whole blocks on both banks of the boundary between North Dakota and Minnesota.

The ground offered no defence. All of this country lay under Lake Agassiz once, which is why the land runs flat for as far as anyone can see and why the water, when it rose, had nowhere at all to go. Institutions carried on regardless.

The North Dakota Museum of Art, Memorial Stadium and Harold Kraft Memorial Field belong to the later town, as do United Lutheran Church and St. Michael's Church on the older streets, and the seat of Grand Forks County has stayed where it was put.

Where is Grand Forks?

Lake Agassiz explains the flatness. Its bed underlies Grand Forks County for miles in every direction, which is why the horizon here sits low and unbroken and why the Red River, running slow through the middle of it, has so little fall to work with. Two towns share one crossing.

Grand Forks stands on the North Dakota side and East Grand Forks on the Minnesota side, close enough that Greater Grand Forks is treated as a single place.

What is the climate of Grand Forks?

Winter arrives off the open plain. Nothing between Grand Forks and the far side of Grand Forks County breaks the wind, so the cold that settles over the old Lake Agassiz bed in the dark months is the sort that shapes a visit rather than colours it. Spring is the risky season.

Meltwater gathering in the Red River gave the city its worst day in 1997, and the same thaw still governs how East Grand Forks and its twin watch the water each spring.

How do you get to Grand Forks?

Nearly everyone drives into Grand Forks. The bridges over the Red River tie Grand Forks to East Grand Forks so closely that crossing between North Dakota and Minnesota takes minutes, and the farm roads of Grand Forks County run straight for as long as the eye follows them. Crossings are the easy part.

Reaching Fargo or Bismarck means a serious drive across open country, and a car stays useful after arrival, since Memorial Stadium, Harold Kraft Memorial Field and the North Dakota Museum of Art sit well apart from one another.