Ross: Where Syrian Homesteaders Built America's First Mosque

In nineteen oh two, Syrian Muslim immigrants began filing homestead claims on the North Dakota prairie near Ross, drawn by the same free land that pulled thousands of other settlers to the Great Plains. Families with names like Juma, Abdallah, and Omar staked out quarter-sections and planted crops, praying five times a day in each other's farmhouses for a generation.

In nineteen twenty-nine they built a small wood-frame mosque, often described as the first purpose-built mosque in the United States. The community eventually shrank, and the building was demolished in the nineteen seventies. But in two thousand four, a new mosque was raised on the same site to preserve the story. The adjacent Muslim cemetery, where those original homesteaders are buried, was added to the National Register of Historic Places and draws visitors from across the country to this remote stretch of prairie.