In the eighteen hundreds, the James River Valley became part of westward travel and settlement in North Dakota, first as a route used by gold seekers and later as a farming region shaped by railroad expansion. By early 1849, gold fever had spread widely, and by 1866 the valley was heavily used by wagon trains heading to the Montana gold fields, crossing the Dakota Territory under harsh conditions that included long travel, limited supplies, bad water, disease, and conflict with Native Americans defending their land. By that time, buffalo herds were nearly gone, many Native Americans had lost battles against the U.S. military, and they had been relocated to reservations. In the late 1800s, eastern businessmen promoted a railroad from Wisconsin to the Pacific, backed by the largest land grant in American history under President Abraham Lincoln, which gave railroads alternating squares of land along the proposed line and government bonds to help finance construction. Jay Cooke helped raise money by selling bonds tied to that land, but construction costs exceeded bond sales, and Cooke's bank failed in September 1873. The railroad through the James River Valley area reached only the Missouri River, and to help complete it, bond investors were offered railroad land at deep discounts, leading to the sale of large farm tracts known as Bonanza Farms. Railroad building transformed the valley as settlers arrived to establish small farmsteads and large farms. In 1880, Grand Rapids and Saratoga Springs, north of present-day Dickey, were the first towns established there by early American settlers of European descent. The oldest known land claim in the valley is the Roscoe farm, where a small cabin was built in 1880 in the southeast quarter of Section 26, Township 135 North, Range 63 West, about four miles south of Dickey. LaMoure County's first official government was organized on October 17, 1881, at the county seat in Grand Rapids, and the valley's small towns also became stopping points for early stagecoach and freight lines. Near the town of LaMoure, the Downing family established a Bonanza Farm that at one time used 96 binders and 480 horses and mules; in 1943, facing financial difficulties, the family sold it to M. H. Steffes.