Anyone who travels U.S. Highway 52 from the Canadian border to Minot or vice versa, most likely knows the old bank building in Carpio was recently demolished.
The bank opened in 1904, and while Hebron Brick opened in 1904, the bricks for the Carpio bank had predate the opening of Hebron Brick. Unfortunately, none of the bricks salvaged after the demolition show a place or a date, so they could have been formed anywhere.
There isn’t a lot of information about brick making in North Dakota outside of the springing up and success of Hebron Brick. But, starting in 1873 in Fargo to 1936, there were brick manufacturers all over the state.
Prior to Hebron, however, there were several in northwestern North Dakota and one has to assume the brickyard was nearby because transporting bricks to Carpio based on weight could get expensive. In fact, there is an ad in a 1905 edition of the Ward County Independent newspaper in Minot. A business lists the different kinds of bricks and their prices: St. Louis Fire Brick $60/thousand; Menomonie Sand Mold Brick, Menomonie Press Brick and St. Louis Press Brick, each $20/thousand; Kenmare Brick and Burlington Brick, $12.50/thousand and Grand Forks Brick, $13/thousand.
Locals know there were more than the yards listed. For instance Baden, between Kenmare and Donnybrook, had an operating yard for a short while.
Most of the time, a company would stamp its name on one side of a brick such as “Hebron” or “Kenmare.” It becomes a lot more difficult to identify when there is no identification. However, the bricks from the Carpio bank are lighter and less dense than Hebron Brick. I’m not sure what that means, but it could indicate the Carpio bank bricks were pressed rather than fired.
According to a 1995 report by the North Dakota Geological Survey, the bricks made in northwestern North Dakota prior to 1904 were either clay stone bricks or alluvial clay. Clay stone is a fine-grained hardened sedimentary rock of consolidated clay particles. Alluvial clay is fine-grained clay particles transported and deposited by flowing water.
The brick industry rose quickly in the early days of Dakota Territory, mostly because of the need to find an alternative to wood buildings that easily caught fire. As a result, the many brick manufacturers popped up across the state so fire retardant buildings could be constructed.
By 1902, North Dakota was producing 21 million bricks valued at $157,000. That number only increased, but took a steep dive during the Great Depression. And, as a reference, that amount of money in 1902 adjusted for inflation, would be $6.2 million today.
According to some historical documents, Fort Stevenson was most likely the first place in Dakota Territory to see brick buildings, predating the Fargo brick yard by seven years. But, apparently, those bricks were shipped on riverboats from St. Louis because nobody knew about the location of the different types of clays in 1866.
That said, Army engineers set out to find those places and most often found heavy clay deposits near coal mines. But, as the Geological Survey pointed out, the alluvials could have been anywhere along a lake, a river or stream.
I was able to salvage a few of the bricks from the Carpio bank site as a keepsake since they are almost as old as the town itself (1902). They are seriously dirty often times with concrete and/or mortar stuck to them. Most of them are broken into two or three pieces.
But for those that can be salvaged, a hammer and chisel takes care of the mortar and sand paper grinds off any excess that won’t come off from the chisel. The bricks are still quite dirty after that.
So to clean them up, they are “washed” with acetic acid and honestly, some of those bricks look as if they just came from the brick yard. Vinegar is acetic acid and in this case it’s a vinegar with a high percentage of acetic acid, such as 30 or 50 percent.
For years, many of us who live in the gooseneck of Ward County wished that bank building could have been saved. Attempts were made to purchase it, historical societies didn’t want it because the cost of repair and finally, the city had it demolished to nullify a safety hazard.
