Before the Civil War, emigrants from Norway usually crossed the Atlantic on board a Norwegian sailing ship from a Norwegian harbor to New York or Quebec. This mode of transportation changed radically in the 1870s. Trans-Atlantic steamship companies from British ports offered faster journeys. A steamship crossed the Atlantic in less than half the time […]
Emigrants from Byneset, Trøndelag, ended up in Montana Read more...
It is high time to tell the story of early Norwegian immigration to Montana. In his excellent book from 1958, Kenneth Bjork, West of the Great Divide. Norwegian Migration to the Pacific Coast, 1847-1893, wrote that important research themes such as the “movement of immigrants from region to region in the New World have been
Time to tell the story of early Norwegian immigrants in Montana Read more...
Many people have written about the history of the Montana cattle industry. In comparison, historical research and writing on the sheep industry in Montana is scant. The stories of “the great sheep trails from California and Oregon have lain in deep obscurity,” wrote Edward N. Wentworth in 1941, while the trails from Texas “with its
Early sheep industry in Montana. The big picture Read more...
Late in the fall of 1864 gold was discovered in a gulch on the west-facing slopes of the Big Belt Mountains. The small stream flowing through the gulch drained into Canyon Ferry Lake. The gold was discovered by four former Confederate soldiers who were traveling south from Fort Benton on the Missouri River. Their destination
Gold discovery led to the establishment of Meagher County, Montana Read more...
Two Grande brothers from Trondheim, the middle of Norway, in 1866 set out on a long and winding journey to the United States. They crossed fjords and oceans, followed rivers, roads and trails over plains, valleys and mountain ranges before they ended up in the grassy Musselshell Valley, Montana, in 1878. The journey was not
From the middle of Norway to Musselshell Valley, Montana Read more...
A map of Chicago from 1830, showing streets and buildings. When Cleng Peerson came here in 1833, he saw a “small village”. But the streets for a greater city were laid out as early as in in 1834.
Better land further west? Read more...
Quakers in the town of Stavanger gave Cleng Peerson an assignment to travel to New York in 1821. They wanted him to explore the conditions for Norwegian immigrants. The assignment was fulfilled in 1825 with the first organized group of emigrants from Norway to the Americas. Cleng Peerson was born in Tysvær, Rogaland county, western
1825 – the beginning of organized emigration from Norway Read more...
Some of the early Norwegian settlers in Montana came from the Rushford area in Fillmore County, Minnesota. Several people in Rushford organized a society with the aim of exploring for better land in Montana. Because of several years with crop failures caused by hail, bugs, and rust in Minnesota they began to dream about better
Step-by-step migration to Montana Read more...
In the 1870s and into the 1880s the copper and pyrite mine at Vigsnæs in Avaldsnes on the west coast island of Karmøy was the largest mine in Norway. For more than a decade the newcomer, now known as Visnes or Vigsnes, on the North Sea surpassed the 300-year-old Royal silver mining establishment at Kongsberg
From the Vigsnes Copper Mine to the copper mines in Montana Read more...
A surprising number of Norwegian-American farmers participated in the settler boom in southern Alberta after 1900. Many among their children and children’s children still live and farm in the region today. Seen from a Norwegian perspective it is both fascinating and surprising that so many Norwegians, used to farming under very wet conditions, and where
Farmers arrived in southern Alberta in large numbers after 1900 Read more...