Dakota Datebook for Jan. 1, 2024: Baby Boom

Jan. 1, 2024 In the start of a new year, it is nice to step back and think about what has happened and what is to come. Many cities publish information summing up events and statistics of the old year. On the first day of 1948, the Fargo Forum published a 40 page newspaper, filled with description of the previous year’s progress and with predictions for the coming year in the Fargo Moorhead area.

The baby boom was definitely well under way; among the top articles in the many, many pages, the Forum listed reports of increased population. The Cass County birth rate was up, and the divorce rate was down, one article stated. However, although the number of people in Fargo was increasing, it was felt that exact numbers couldn’t be determined until 1950.

Judging by gas and water connections, telephones and electric meters, though, not all of which had been installed, the city had grown by hundreds, even thousands. Of course, with increased people, more places of business and residence needed to be established. The Forum claimed that residential construction hit $5 million in 1947, and it showed no signs of stopping.

Housing was expected to be a problem for 1948, as it had been for 1947. The paper reported, “indications point to as big a housing construction year, … but accompanied with virtually all the problems of 1947.” There were 203 permits given out for temporary housing, in which families lived in trailers, basements, houses on blocks, even converted garages, structures that they were to keep up to code that would house them and their families.

Many lived in hotels, so that vacancies were rare. ADVERTISEMENT Even for those who were building, the price of materials was increasing. The paper claimed this housing problem, both national and international “in scope,” stemmed from too many people building houses. Statistically speaking, though, housing was needed.

At the start of the year, the Fargo Chamber of Commerce had a list of 200 families waiting for vacancies These problems and points of progress were happening everywhere, of course, but nowhere more succinctly, if not shortly, stated than in the Forum. Therefore, it should serve as no surprise that the North Dakota baby derby, celebrating the first new baby born in the New Year, benefitted a West Fargo child, a girl born to the Mannes family at 12:25 a.m.

on January 1. In an odd coincidence, a baby boy was born at the exact same time in Minot, to the Wilson family. “The 1948 stork derby in North Dakota will go down in the books as a two way tie between the sexes,” the Bismarck Tribune stated. It was an auspicious start to a new generation. “Dakota Datebook” is a radio series from Prairie Public in partnership with the State Historical Society of North Dakota and with funding from the North Dakota Humanities Council.

See all the Dakota Datebooks at prairiepublic.org , subscribe to the “Dakota Datebook” podcast, or buy the Dakota Datebook book at shopprairiepublic.org . Share Share this article News reporting News reporting Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources.

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