Clay County Histories

Markus Krueger | Program Director HCSCC

I want to wish Moorhead Police Chief Shannon Monroe a happy retirement and thank him for his many years of service. His retirement got me thinking of Jim Blanchard, Moorhead’s first officer of the law.
Jim Blanchard came to Moorhead before there was a Moorhead. In the summer of 1871, everyone knew that wherever the Northern Pacific Railway crossed the Red River, the next great city of the west would be built. Well, Jim had a son working for that railroad, and that son let the secret location slip to his dad, so Jim got here before everybody else. A covered wagon parked on what is now 1st Ave N near the old stone American Legion/RiverHaven building was Jim Blanchard’s home and general store when Moorhead was born.
The railroad publicly announced their crossing site in early September and Jim suddenly got 400 new neighbors. He built the first wooden building in town, about where they are building the new public library on 4th Street and Center Ave. Nobody was in charge of this town – no police, no government – so Moorhead attracted guys with guns who prefer to conduct business in towns without laws. These guys were effectively in charge, and Moorhead was as wild as the west got.
On April 25, 1872, gamblers Slim Jim Shumway and Shang Stanton got into a shooting match that left two people dying in the street. The people of Moorhead were fed up with all the gunfights and violence. Jim Blanchard recalled in his memoir that two men “came running to me and asked, ‘Why don’t they arrest Shumway? I says, ‘Why don’t you arrest Shumway – you have just as good a right as anybody to arrest Shumway.” The three decided to go together and, finding Shumway mortally wounded on a restaurant table, decided to let him be. Jim found and arrested Shang Stanton. Solomon Comstock, a railroad laborer with a law degree, was asked to be Shang’s attorney, and David Grant agreed to be judge. To make these appointments official, two County Commissioners were chosen, and those commissioners picked Jim Blanchard to be our first Sherrif. This is how the government of Clay County was formed.
Rule of law had arrived! Kind of. In reality, Moorhead was still ruled by scary men with guns. One day, Sherrif Blanchard was called to arrest Ed Smith. Blanchard walked into Ed’s saloon after midnight. He counted sixteen of Ed’s friends having a roaring time. Jim beckoned Ed to a corner of the saloon and gently informed Ed that he had a warrant for his arrest. “Well, boys, what shall I do?” Ed loudly asked the crowd. Surprisingly, Dave Mullen, perhaps the meanest of Moorhead’s desperados, responded “What will you do – You’ll go along, that’s what you’ll do.” Ed obeyed. He put a buddy in charge of his bar and allowed himself to be arrested. Moorhead didn’t have a jail yet, so Sheriff Blanchard rented a room at a nearby hotel and slept handcuffed to his prisoner until Ed could pay his fine in the morning.
Work would get easier for Jim. Within a few short years, most of Moorhead’s desperados moved off to the next lawless track-end town (Bismarck in 1873, Deadwood in 1876). We built a jail. Maybe more importantly, we built schools, churches, and all those institutions that made people want to raise their families here. Unlike Deadwood, Tombstone, and Dodge City, Moorhead’s Wild West past faded from memory. Jim Blanchard continued to serve as a lawman in many capacities. I found a 1905 newspaper article saying Blanchard was serving another term as police constable at age 84! The guy didn’t know how to retire.