By LeRoy Barnett, North Dakota History Journal of the Northern Plains
"At one time one of the major exports of the region was buffalo bones. The business of buying and selling buffalo bones started about 1868 with the booming of the railroad. It made it profitable to ship the bones to Eastern Carbon and fertilizer factories. Piles of bones began to appear near the railroad stations. Railroads were happy to have a payload for the return trip. The total quantity of bones collected in one year filled 5,000 boxcars. The average freight car charge was $100 because this business was a good source of income for the railroads.
The farmers could collect about $8 a ton for gathering the bones. It literally became the first crop gathered for many pioneers as they worked to plant the soil. With so many people gathering the bones it took less than a decade before they were all collected. During the short period of time more than two million tons were sold to the eastern factories for rendering into charcoal filters and manurial phosphate. $40,000,000 was brought to the Great Plains area.
Michigan Carbon Works of Detroit in 1873 started to distill bones into animal charcoal which was used for filtering and purifying sugar syrup. After the buffalo bones were no longer available the raw materials were imported from Europe."
This advertisement appeared in the New Rockford Transcript. It was placed in there by J.G. Moore of Carrington
"Buffalo bones: I am prepared to buy buffalo bones and will pay $8 per ton for the same delivered at New Rockford."
The gathering and sale of buffalo bones assisted many of the pioneers of this area to get the necessities of life. None of the new settlers of this section were blessed with much money and as winter approached many of them were hard pressed for the where-with-all to buy coal and provisions for themselves and their families. Mr. Olson, editor of the Transcript remembered when he and his two brothers plodded over the prairies north of Carrington dragging a heavy homemade cart and picking up the massive bones and putting them in piles which were later thrown in a lumber wagon, hauled to Carrington and sold to the same J.G. Moore. This was in the summer of 1883 and the 80 odd tons collected by the Olson family that summer helped materially to keep the wolf from the door until the crop was harvested the next year. Many of the pioneers, in fact nearly all of them, kept the younger members of the family busy collecting the bones of these animals. Thousands of dollars were paid.
Source: A History of Foster County 1983 Page 62