The Night Downtown Burned in the Water

The block you are looking at now was largely rebuilt after nineteen ninety-seven. What stood here before that spring was Grand Forks's historic commercial downtown, brick storefronts and banks and a hotel district that dated to the eighteen eighties and nineties, the prosperous years when Red River Valley wheat was making fortunes and Grand Forks aspired to be a regional metropolis.

On the night of April nineteenth, nineteen ninety-seven, with the city already drowning under six to eight feet of floodwater, fire broke out in a building on DeMers Avenue in the heart of downtown. The exact ignition point was disputed but electrical failure in a flooded structure was the most likely cause. The fire spread quickly to neighboring buildings. Grand Forks had a fully staffed fire department, but the streets were impassable. The firefighters launched boats. They could not get close enough to fight the blaze with any effectiveness.

Eleven buildings burned over the course of roughly four hours. Firefighters and National Guard soldiers watched from boats as the structures were consumed. Some buildings burned down to their foundations; the water put out the embers at street level. When the flood receded weeks later, the downtown streetscape had changed permanently. Eleven lots where buildings had stood were now empty.

The rebuilding of downtown Grand Forks became a national story about civic resilience. The city used the disaster as an opportunity to convert the most flood-prone riverside blocks into a greenway park, the Greenway, which now runs for about twenty-two miles along both banks of the Red River and serves as both public open space and a first line of defense against future floods. The rebuilt downtown is smaller and more modern than what came before, but it is all elevated above the flood line.