Stella Estrada, researcher and author.
In the early 1880`s a group of Finnish people came to the Western Dakota prairies seeking homesteads. Most of them settled on the south side of the Belle Fourche River about eight to ten miles east of the present site of Belle Fourche, South Dakota.
So what brought the Finnish to South Dakota? There were three main factors that led to. Throughout Europe the railroad companies were recruiting people to come and settle America. ``The people were told that America was supposed to have golden streets.`` Said Martha Lakson. Since South Dakota had gold mines, most of them chose to come here. About this time, Russia was beginning to draft Finnish soldiers into their army. A lot of those men escaped by coming to America.
The Finnish settlement was originally named Suomi, meaning Finland. The United States Postal Officials mistook the letter ``U`` for the letter ``N`` and they weren`t quite sure of the spelling. In 1890 when the official appointment came through, the town was named Snoma.
Most of the settlers would work at the Homestake Mine in Deadwood. They walked 7 miles to their jobs The men would usually stay up there for the week, then walk back to Snoma on the weekends to see their families.
Fruitdale is about a mile north of Snoma. It was started in 1890 by Henry M. Sterns. The land were Fruitdale sits was originally owned by Stella Montgomery. When Henry Sterns bought the land he looked at it and saw many different varieties of fruits. Chokecherries, plums, and apple trees seemed to be growing everywhere! It is also located in a valley and ``dale`` means ``valley so he named it Fruitdale.
Both the Snoma and Fruitdale areas began to prosper. Snoma existed from 1887 until 1897. Then, many of it`s residents moved either to be closer to the railroad or to be closer to the Homestake Mine.
Fruitdale wasn`t a huge town, the population was never over 200. Since the people in the area wanted to be involved in a community, many decided to be part of the Fruitdale committees.
Fruitdale is famous for its 3rd of July fireworks. It started with a family picnic in the park. Everybody brought their fireworks and started displaying them. Eventually this got so big that they moved it to Orman Dam. After they moved to the Dam, they started to open it to people outside the Fruitdale area. This has been a big attraction for 45 to 46 years now.
Fruitdale had an earlier claim to fame, pickles! Many of the area residents grew cucumbers. What started that? Well, the Squire Dingee Co. built a recieving station along the railroad tracks. It was owned by Squire Dingee Co. which ran through Chicago and Illinois. The Squire Dingee Co. was one of the oldest established pickle packing industries in the United States. It was established in 1856. The Squire Dingee Co. came to the area to look over acreage possibilities. Many of the farmers participated in the pickle works. ``The smaller the gherkin the higher the wages were.`` Recalled George Higashi. When the gas rationing and the rubber shortage was taking place during World War II, (WWII) the United States Government bought 25% of the company. Pickles were used to balance the soldiers diets. They felt that the boys who couldn`t get fresh salads daily must have the nutritional benefit of the acetic and lactic acids from pickles.
In 1945 much of the cucumber acreage was contracted by the farmers. The farmers were helped by German prisoners of war and by Mexican nationals. The farmers received half of the pay and the government collected the other half from the pickle company. In 1946-48, after the war years, labor became a problem.
Some tried to bring Indians from the reservation, and also people from Jamaica, but this never worked out. As labor became too difficult, the factory was closed.
People also grew sugar beets and then there were those who did both! Raising sugar beets became a long, labor-intensive process. Beets had to placed evenly in rows and then they had to be thinned. After that, there was the weeding and harvesting of the beets.
So how did this all get started? Orman Dam was built in the early 1900`s. The dam was made for irrigation. Sterns was one of those who saw possibility of sugar beets. As the talk got around it took about twenty-three years of promotion to attract a factory.
The Butte County area started the effort to make a sugar company in Belle Fourche. R. F. Walters was an engineer in charge of reclamation work in the Butte County area. He distributed the seed to twenty farmers, and each planted one acre into beets as a test crop. Ten years went by and the results were fantastic. Then they sent them to the sugar companies to look at.
In 1916 Seth Bullock decided to sell his land to the Great Western Sugar Company for a factory near Belle Fourche. The Sugar Company needed to contract 8,000 of acres in order to support it! The area started grow with the sugar beets. Beets from South Dakota, Iowa, and Nebraska were being shipped to the Belle Fourche for processing. The Irrigation Project in the Belle Fourche Valley was run by the area`s hardworking farmers.
There were many difficulties in growing beets. Farmers needed laborers to help them with the hard work that had to be done. George Higashi explained that, because most of the laborers traveled in circuits, this caused them to be unreliable. If they got unhappy with one job, they simply moved over to another job somewhere else. The farmers didn`t know where the laborers would be next.
There was probably three reasons why the sugar beet factory failed. The first could have been because of the labor problems. The second problem that occurred was that the area couldn`t produce enough beets to make it profitable. Finally some say the sugar beet factory equipment was starting to become out dated and realized it would cost to much to be replaced.
Not all of the industrial businesses were a failure. Some succeeded and began to increase their business everyday. An example of that would be the honey industry.
Fruitdale honey became very popular and Fruitdale was known as the honey capital of the world for many years. Henry Sterns had a wonderful orchard and he needed bees to pollinate the flowers. Eventually more families came and started their own honey industries. Some of the families are still in the honey business are the McIntires, the Foxes, and the Martindales. Honey is still a big thing in Fruitdale. It is not the honey capital anymore, because like everything-else the world has changed.