The city of Garrison didn’t always stand where it is today. In the late 1800s, the area was still known as Fort Stevenson County after the 19th century frontier military fort on the banks of the Missouri, memorialized today in the naming of Fort Stevenson State Park to the south of town. Although the park contains a partial reconstruction of the fort, don’t go looking for the actual remains - unless you have SCUBA gear! The original fort location now lies beneath the Walleye-filled waters of Lake Sakakawea!

After Fort Stevenson was abandoned in 1883, the area then became known as McLean County and the surrounding land was quickly being settled by homesteaders from the eastern United States. At this time, North Dakota hadn’t yet even achieved statehood! But the Bismarck, Washburn, and Great Falls Railway, which would later become part of the Soo Line Railway, had been progressing in this direction. In anticipation of the coming demand for building and agricultural materials, it was to this area in March of 1903 that Theodore Taylor and his brother, Cecil, who went by “Cid”, rode in their buggy from Wilton, North Dakota, to find a location for a lumber and mercantile business. Today, that’s only about an hour’s drive in a heated car, including a shortcut across the water via the Lake Audubon Causeway, but for the Taylor brothers, it must’ve been a much longer, bumpier, colder, and uncertain journey. Once a location for their store was established, they then had to haul lumber and other materials the one-and-a-half miles each way from the steamboat landing on the Missouri River to their building site, sleeping in tents and cooking meals over a fire until permanent dwellings could be constructed. The North Dakota climate assuredly made this no easy feat. By September, an early snow storm had blanketed their settlement in eight inches of snow. But it soon melted, and diligently they proceeded.

That same year, the Taylor brothers organized a petition to establish a post office for the area, which succeeded, and so the need for an official town name arose. The name of Garrison was chosen on account of the area’s military fort history and proximity to Garrison Creek, and “Cid” Taylor was made Garrison’s first postmaster! By 1905, the railway was finally going to make it to Garrison, a new parcel of land was allocated for the town, and businesses, like the Taylors’, either moved or began springing up quickly - a bank, a barbershop, an eating establishment, and hotel, among others. The town was soon to become a new center for agricultural trade in North Dakota and the site of several mining operations. If you were there when the first train pulled up that October in 1905, you would undoubtedly have been delighted by the whistles, whoops, and bowler derby hats flying through the air, celebrating the hard work and robust spirits of the people of Garrison.