Emmons County, North Dakota

Emmons County, North Dakota
Emmons County Courthouse in Linton
Location in the U.S. state of North Dakota
North Dakota's location in the U.S.
Founded	November 9, 1883
Seat	Linton
Largest city	Linton
Area
• Total	1,555 sq mi (4,027 km2)
• Land	1,510 sq mi (3,911 km2)
• Water	45 sq mi (117 km2), 2.9%
Population (est.)
• (2015)	3,402
• Density	2.4/sq mi (1/km²)
Congressional district	At-large
Time zone	Central: UTC-6/-5

Emmons County is a county located in the U.S. state of North Dakota. As of the 2010 census, the population was 3,550. Its county seat has been Linton since 1899. The county was created by the 1879 territorial legislature and named for James A. Emmons (1845–1919), a steamboat operator and early Bismarck merchant and entrepreneur. It was organized on November 9, 1883.

Emmons County was established before the state of North Dakota. The county was originated by an act of territorial legislation during February 1879. However, it was not officially organized until November 9, 1883. It was named for James A. Emmons, who was a steamboat navigator from Virginia and merchant in Bismarck.

The first settlers of Emmons County came from parts of Europe and the eastern United States. The earliest were mostly soldiers discharged from Fort Yates, but civilians began arriving in the 1880s. Two large ethnic groups soon developed: Germans from both Russia and Germany (the latter called Reich Germans) and Hollanders who had come from the eastern United States. The Hollanders lived only in the southwestern part of the county while the Germans settled throughout the area.

The settlers faced many hardships upon arrival in Emmons County. The worst of which was probably the adverse climate. Extreme seasonal variations in temperature, wind, rain, and snow made life difficult. Severe winter blizzards and summer thunderstorms and tornadoes were a constant threat. To shelter themselves against the sometimes inhospitable climate, early settlers built crude but durable dwellings using whatever materials they could find. The first building in Emmons county was a log cabin built near what was to become the town of Winona in 1852. Some other early dwellings were built of tar paper or local rocks. Rocks were a common sight on the prairie, but stone houses were a rarity because they took great care to build. The most common type of dwelling was the sod house, which later became synonymous with pioneering life on the prairie. Sod is prairie grass and dirt cut into blocks and stacked to form walls. Sod was an effective solution to the problem of limited lumber availability. These crude dwellings were eventually abandoned in favor of more modern homes as soon as the necessary building materials became available.