Finding aid

File — Box: 1, Folder: 1

Staff Only

Scope and Contents

From the Collection: The Northern States Power company, Fargo District Records are made up of a cookbook and some documents included with a donation of photographs from NSP. They are organized into two series: Home Service Department cookbook and a subject file series. The Northern States Power Home Service Department Recipe Book Series includes all the material removed from a three-ring binder containing mimeographed recipes issued by the department. They are not dated by appear to span from 1932 to the 1950s. It is believed the recipes were issued from the headquarters in Minneapolis and not Fargo. There is a printed index for the recipe collection. The index identified recipes in two different series: Business Women’s Class (B) and the Homemakers Class (H). In some instances a recipe can be found with both the B and the H series, but located on a single page. All recipe sheets are numbered. There are also recipes which were not in the two series listed above, including bread recipes and miscellaneous recipes. The final folder contains a set of recipes featured on a NSP sponsored television cooking show. In the Subject File Series, the first file contains some souvenirs from Fargo’s 75th and 100th anniversary celebrations. These involve three humorous certificates for the “Brothers of the Brush” beard growing contest, made out to Harold Sandvik. The next folder contains three newspaper articles involving Fargo and NSP. The first one is a 1962 Fargo Forum clipping about the ground breaking for the new Fargo NSP office building. Another article is from a 1971 Minneapolis Tribune. It details how businesses in downtown Fargo were looking at ways to hold shoppers downtown once the West Acres shopping mall was built. The third article was from a 1976 St. Paul Pioneer Press, it is about the new NSP chief executive Don McCarthy. The next folder holds educational materials on the operation of the steam plant. This includes a real good explanation of the inner workings of the steam plant, and blue print diagrams of the boilers and stokers made up in 1930. There is an 1882 receipt to the Electric Light Company from the Rolph Bros. Dealers in Hardware, Glass, Tinware and Plumbing. The scrapbook has ‘Advertising’ and ‘November 1928’ on the cover and title page. It contains a wide variety of advertising for Northern State Power promoting electrical use and many home appliances including Kelvinator stoves, Eureka vacuum cleaner, Reliable stoves, and Hotpoint stoves. Most are newspaper advertisements, but the scrapbook does include flyers and booklets regarding various appliances. There is also a copy of the booklet The Light to Happiness by Edith Cook, published in 1928 by Northern States Power.