Moorhead, MN Summary

Moorhead has a population of 32,300 residents and lies 173 miles to the northwest of Minneapolis-St Paul. It is adjacent to Fargo, North Dakota. This is quite a scenic spot on the Red River, and a center for farming, manufacturing, and dairying. Moorhead has many attractive old houses, including Comstock House, which was built in 1883. It is also home to Concordia College, well known for its music studies.

However, the town is perhaps best known for the Hjemkomst, the 77-foot replica of an ancient Viking ship. Housed in the Heritage Hjemkomst Interpretive Center, it was built by Robert Asp when he was a junior high school teacher.

His idea was to sail it to Norway. Modeling it after a 1,000-year-old Jokstad Viking warship that might have journeyed across the ocean, Asp built the ship from native white oak in an old potato warehouse, but he was then diagnosed with leukemia. He was able to sail the ship on Lake Superior before he died. In 1982 a crew that included Asp’s children sailed the ship from Lake Superior to Bergen, Norway, surviving a ferocious North Atlantic storm that cracked its hull.

Moorhead can be reached by car by US-10, US-75, and I-94, and also by plane.