Fergus Falls, Minnesota

 city, county seat

FERGUS FALLS, platted in August 1870, on a site that had been selected and named in 1857, was incorporated as a village February 29, 1872, and as a city March 3, 1881. Within the city limits, along a course of about three miles, the Otter Tail River descends nearly 70 feet, having originally comprised here a nearly continuous series of rapids, flowing over boulders of the glacial drift. The county seat was first located in 1868 at Otter Tail City and was removed to Fergus Falls in the later part of 1872. The township of this name, which included the north half of the present city area, was organized June 29, 1870.

The first permanent settler was Ernest Buse, who came in 1865 and became the first mayor; George Burdick Wright of Minneapolis, who came in 1867 and built a dam in 1870 and a sawmill and flour mill in 1871, was instrumental in the development of the community. The site was platted in August 1870 by George Wright. The post office began in 1870, with H. N. Hannigson (Henreich Hanigsen) as first postmaster.

James Fergus, for whom the township and city were named, was born in Lanarkshire, Scotland, October 8, 1813. "At the age of nineteen he came to America with the idea of improving his fortune. He located in Canada at first, where he spent three years and learned the trade of millwright. . . . In 1854 he removed to Little Falls, Minnesota, and, in company with C. A. Tuttle, built a dam across the Mississippi and platted a village. Here he remained for two or three years. During the townsite speculation fever, in the winter of 1856 and 1857, Joseph Whitford, a blacksmith and steamboat engineer, a natural frontiersman, possessed of uncommon courage, energy and prudence, proposed to go out and take up a townsite at what was known as Graham's Point, on the Red [Otter Tail] river. Mr. Fergus furnished the necessary outfit for this expedition. Procuring a dog train and a half-breed guide, Whitford went to Graham's Point and staked out a town. On their way back, at Red river, an Indian family told them of a better place for a town twenty miles distant. Leaving his half-breed to recruit, Whitford took an Indian as a guide and went to the place designated and staked off what is now Fergus Falls, the name being given by the exploring party in honor of the man who had furnished the outfit for the expedition. Mr. Fergus himself never visited the place.
Fergus Falls is a city in Otter Tail County, Minnesota, United States. The population was 13,471 at the 2000 census. It is the county seat of Otter Tail County.