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In recalling the many saloons of the pre-Prohibition era in Bemidji, it is easy to think of the robust bartenders and saloon keepers as owners of the property, but this was seldom the case.
Although Bemidji was not incorporated until 1896, it had a steady pattern of growth beginning in 1870 when Oliver W. Barnes traveled by stagecoach, ox team and a canoe route to the Bemidji area with a government surveying party and spent spent the next six years mapping the northern part of the state. Barnes reported only one Native American person living at the outlet of the Mississippi for miles around the Bemidji area. The title to the Bemidji land was acquired in 1883 by Phillip Reilly of the John Martin Reilly Lumber Company of Minneapolis for its pine value. In 1888, Marion Ellsworth ...