What did the pioneers see when they arrived in Foster County? In stories told to their descendants they describe the miles and miles of open prairie covered with a very thick native grass. The only landmark for miles was the Hawksnest hills. There was not a tree in sight! In some areas the ground was white with buffalo bones, a grim reminder of the animals that had been slaughtered years earlier.
Mrs. Thomas Posey gives this account:
"It was in the early morning of a beautiful day in October 1883, when I first saw the boundless rolling prairie of Dakota, as it then was. I was very much disappointed and disillusioned. Although, I was only nine years of age, I had some very decided ideas of my own as to what a country should look like.
I expected trees everywhere, and brooks and all the nice features that the country always has in the land of storybooks. That was all I knew of the country as we had come directly from Chicago. We spent the first winter in town, moving onto the claim in the spring."
In years later as she again was asked about the prairie:
"I do not think I could be satisfied anywhere else. I love them. I like trees, but when it comes to being surrounded and walled in by them, where you can't tell the wind is blowing only by seeing the top branches waving, I do not want them. I want to see the 'prairies rolling away and away until the edge of them is lost in a quivering haze. I want to watch the dead brown turning to a beautiful living green, first in the low spots and gradually creeping to higher places, dotted thickly with the pale Pasque flowers, or crocuses, as they are commonly called. I thought that was a beautiful sight the first time I beheld it and think the same every spring since.
There is such a sense of freedom and unlimited room to breathe imparted to one who gazes over the prairies. Nothing confining or cramping or narrow. It seems as though they could not help but be big and generous and broad in every way. How can meanness and smallness and narrow‑mindedness exist? I did not start out to preach a sermon, so we, who love the prairies are given the privilege of having our sermons preached silently none the less effectively."
This story was submitted by Carl H. Pewe, Juanita, North Dakota.
"The following event was related to my father and me in the summer of 1912 by Mr. Andrew Nerby of McHenry, North Dakota. It was during the winter of 1897‑98 that Mr. Nerby drove to Cooperstown, North Dakota for a load of coal. Cooperstown was the nearest supply station. A year before the Northern Pacific had extended the railroad to McHenry.
It took two days travel time, with a team of horses to make the round trip. Late in the afternoon on the second day homeward, Mr. Nerby was overtaken by a severe snowstorm. The drifts became deeper and deeper. The horses had to be rested more often. Mr. Nerby knowing that he would never be able to haul the load of coal home, unloaded three quarters of it in a pile on the snow‑covered prairie. Driving onward towards home the team took him right up to the front door of the house. Hearing the noise, Mrs. Nerby soon came out of the house with a lantern being fully clothed for cold blustery weather. Helping her husband untie the team they were soon on the way to the barn. After two more days of blowing and drifting, the storm as the old timers used to say went down. Feed supplies and water being plentiful, Mr. Nerby drove out after his coal that he had unloaded. The only thing he found was a hole in the snow bank where they coal had been and the fine dust that man could not pick up. Only thing to do was to go to Cooperstown after another load of coal. On arriving home in the afternoon on the second day during the daylight hours a much worried but relieved family greeted him in the yard.
After the crops had been seeded that spring Mr. Nerby went to Cooperstown after a summer's supply of coal. His family, thinking he would be away for two days, was really surprised when Andrew drove in their farmyard in time for dinner.
A few feet away from where he had unloaded part of his load during the winter was a fresh supply of coal. They never found out who the man was but he had replaced what he had borrowed. Truly a sign of an honest man.
Source: A History of Foster County 1983 Page 54