A Caravan of covered wagons drawn by oxen came to Griggs County in 1882 and camped by Jessie Lake. Among these was Gilbert P. Olson, Oscar's father who settled by Long Lake. John Paulson and his wife settled on the south bank of Norway Lake, where there were a couple acres of trees such as Elm, Ash, Asp, Hackleberry, Boxelder, cottonwood and bunch of chokecherries trees. Fish were found in Norway Lake. Ole K. Olson came later that year and he settled with his wife and daughter on the west side bank of Norway Lake. The remainder of the caravan settled by Red Willow Lake.
John Paulson and Ole K. Olson had dug-outs in the hillside of Norway Lake. They got their logs and poles from trees by Jessie Lake, also some from the Sheyenne River. They got some rough lumber for floors, doors and such from Portland, North Dakota about 45 miles away. They drove to Valley City, about 60 miles to buy flour and other supply of food that would last them over the fall and winter months.
The early settlers raised cattle, sheep and hogs and also had dairy products. Spinning wheels were used for spinning wool. In the winter months trees were chopped down to be used for fuel to produce heat and for cooking. They trapped minks, muskrats and weasels for furs to sell.
Wild geese and ducks were plentiful on the lakes and ponds. Prairie chickens were numerous and rabbits and cottontails were found in the bushes. There was no hunting season restriction in those days. The biggest pests were gophers and crows, also coyotes and foxes. The county paid a one-cent bounty for gopher tails and also a bounty on coyotes but not on foxes. Buffalo bones were picked up to sell for fertilizer products.
Early day farmers threshed grain with horse power. Teams of horses pulled a long pole shaft extending from a center of a gear casing. Horses were stepping around in a circle all day pulling that gear shaft, a steel shaft from the gear-case to the threshing machine. One man stood on each side of the machine cutting the twine of the grain bundles and fed it to the machine, all done by hand. One man he knew lost a hand that way. One team of horses bucked the straw away before blowers were used, grain was put in two-bushel bags and hauled to grain bins that way.
The first steam threshing rigs Mr. Olson saw in early nineties consisted of a movable steam engine and a threshing machine that had to be moved from one setting to another by horses or mules. These were used both for stack threshing as well as shock threshing.
There was a weekly mail route from Cooperstown to Jessie Lake where Mr. McCulloch was the postmaster. From Jessie Lake the route went to Cottonwood post office, 5 miles north of Jessie. Ole Alfson was a local postmaster there.
Mr. Oscar Olson remembers visiting the construction crew camps of tents of the Northern Pacific railroad from Cooperstown to McHenry. He watched the chefs cooking meals for the men, also how the men worked, grading up the railroad beds, and laying rails. In the fall another crew came along and put up the telegraph poles and line. Another crew built the depot in Binford and Jessie. Mr. Olson remembers when they built the first grain-elevators in Jessie and Binford. Binford got its name from Mr. Binford who built the first general store there.
Source: Griggs County History 1879 - 1976 page 178