The main river which flows in general from the north to a south direction in the central part of the county is the James River. It has been described as the "longest unnavigable river in the world".
Historians who have made a study of how names were acquired have come up with this story about the naming of this river. (Ind. March 29, 1923)
"The Indians first called the river "Red Willow".
Dana Wright reports that it was called "Can-so-sa, which means "red bark tree". A bush called "Kinninick" by the Indians or more scientifically "Cornus Stalonifera". Some persons called this bush "red willow" of dogwood from the color of the bark in the winter. This tree or bark is common along the river."
Another story is that a French-Indian trapper and hunter became lost while he was out on a hunting trip. He was overjoyed when he discovered this little river and he named it Riviere de Jacques" after himself. Later with the coming of the English-speaking people, the name of the river took the English translation of "Jacques" to "James".
Other names used at one time or another were Tehan-sna, son of the Sioux, Dakota River, and Jim River.
"The James River flows southward through the middle of the county in a trench like valley that is cut by the great stream of late glacial times, which carried the drainage from the front of the ice after it retreated past this area to the moraines on the east and north and before it was diverted to the Sheyenne River by still further retreat. It was for a comparatively short time a large river which cut its valley and carried away all the debris from it save the largest boulders, which are characteristic features of its bed and banks today. The waters were diverted so suddenly that it had no time to lay down an extensive valley train of gravel and sand during its waning, thus leaving few gravel deposits and little alluvium in its valley. The boulders form numerous riffles, and over them the small stream of summer trickles between the many detached pools and lakes that fill the lower depressions in the valley floor. Ice in winter has shoved these boulders outward and up to form a low massive boulder wall covered with marsh and grass. Several deep coulees, the abandoned courses of glacial streams, in which now only small streams and marsh remain, pass across the western part of the county southeastward to the James River Valley." (Horton Report)
(Missouri River Basin Commission bulletin 1980)
"The James River flows east, then south from near Fessenden, North Dakota 710 miles to join the Missouri River east of Yankton, South Dakota Along the way, it has the flattest gradient of any river its length in North America. From its headwaters in North Dakota to the South Dakota border (about 200 miles), the channel drops 280 feet. The river's slope decreases rapidly at the North Dakota-South Dakota border, so that over the remaining 500 miles of flow in South Dakota it falls only 100 feet. It takes a full three weeks for water in the main channel to traverse the state."
The first settlement along the river was in 1871 when a group of engineers camped here. Soon soldiers from Fort Ransom came to establish a fort for the protection of the railroad workers. This fort was called Fort Seward.
An early attempt to prove the statement wrong that the river was not navigable was made by E.P. Wells in 1879 as reported in the LaMoure Chronicle. Mr. Wells bought a gasoline boat and sent it down to where the river was deep enough to float a craft. He sent a crew of men headed by Major E.T. Elliot to move the boat to a point l0 miles below the city of LaMoure. It was the latter part of October when the party left Jamestown on their mission. By the time the crew arrived at the location of the boat the weather turned cold and the river froze over during the night. They unloaded the boat and began the return trip back to Jamestown. They made the trip in spite of some of the worst blizzard conditions ever experienced. All of the men had their faces and ears frosted.
They tried again to navigate the river in the spring but the bends and turns of the noble river did not make the venture feasible.
Another attempt was made by a Jamestown merchant, Anton Klaus, in 1880. He had a sternwheeler 75 feet long and 14 feet wide, which he called the "Nellie Baldwin". It operated one season on the shallow river making its run south of Jamestown. After that year it was used as an excursion boat on the Spiritwood Lake. The following verses written by some of the early settlers and printed in the eighties or nineties give a very good picture of life on the prairie, only that we no longer hear the threshing machine called the steamer.
Source: A History of Foster County 1983 Page 5