Remembering the 1956 fire in downtown Valley City

On a winter night in 1956, Valley Appliance and the S & L Store in Valley City, North Dakota, burned to the ground. The appliance store, located in downtown Valley City was owned by the Roy Sheppard family. As most of our class of 1961 knows, the store was rebuilt and remained a prominent Valley City business over many years, renamed "Sheppard's," selling appliances and phonograph records. It's where I, as a teenager, along with many of you, bought 45s of popular tunes. 

The daughter of the owner of Valley Appliance and our classmate, Barbara (Sheppard) Lang, recalls her family's experiences after the fire and her own memories of that terrible night. Barb and I recorded this video on November 20, 2014, during the Hiliners61' "lunch bunch" luncheon in the President's House on the campus of Valley City State University.

Included in the video are color photos taken that night by Jim Miller and black and white photos taken by Al Olson, classmate Warren Olson's brother. After Al saw the first version of the video with Miller's photos, he sent us six excellent black and white photographs and we thank him for contributing to the video. Together, Miller's and Olson's photographs vividly help re-create this sad moment in Valley City history.

Our thanks to Wes Anderson, curator of the Barnes County Historical Museum, for providing us with the color photographs of the fire and pictures of our former Junior High School and the "Right Price Department Store," a local retailer also lost because of a fire during an earlier era. 

If you have memories of that night, please share them with us in the comments section below.

Click here to see the video.