AHC: a major city where the Red River crosses the 49th parallel

With a POD near 1904, cause there to exist a major urban area at the following location:

https://www.google.com/maps/place/4...14z/data=!4m5!3m4!1s0x0:0x0!8m2!3d49!4d-97.23

The rules are:

1. The urban area must be roughly equal to or larger than Fargo-Moorhead.

2. It must span both the Red River and the 49th parallel.

3. It must be functionally one city, but may be legally three muncipalities for obvious reasons.

4. The centerline of the main street must be exactly on the US/Canada border.

5. Said main street must include a bridge over the river.

6. The unity of the urban area must be considered important enough to warrant either an official or unofficial exception to border crossing regulations when the US and Canada start getting serious about such things in the 1920s, similarly to how Derby Line, VT and Stanstead, QC were treated before 9/11.
 
Looking at the Wikipedia page for Emerson, Manitoba, this would be easier with a late 19th century POD. The cities in the US, Pembina, ND/Noyes, MN, would probably be smaller than the Canadian city, Emerson.
 
It might be an interesting idea, however one must take into consideration the level of spring flooding there .... It can be pretty intense.Most, if not all, cities, towns, villages and even farms from Fargo to just south of Winnipeg, are blessed with well maintained ring dikes.

I would hazard a guess that a move west toward the area surrounding the current pipeline crossing at Gretna, might well be a slightly better option... South of Winkler probably even better.

The only challenge with such moves would be fonding a pod to shift from the river.

To see the Red River valley in flood stage is an awesome experience and goes a long way to explainwhy a city in that locale would be achallenge at best.

In the 1990's I was in one of the last convoys of trucks to leave Grand Forks northbound to Emerson. We were led by an 8x8 national guard truck all the way to Emerson, and they were closing the ring dike when the last of us got through.

It was probably one of the more creepy four hours of driving I had ever put in, as more often than not you were driving in water,with your only markers being stakes put on the roadside.

Check.out the flooding history of the Red River valley .... That in combination with Winnipeg's unlikely willingness to look kindly on such a southern urban competitor, would for the most part, put paid to the eise of such a city.

How about further west?
Say they find goodly stocks of coal (or even gold!) in the Turtle Mountains ... or the possibility of an oil boom just about amywhere west of Snowflake, MB?

Maybe an earlier and more properly reported discovery of the evidence of prehistoric mound builders from the region of the town of Boissevain, MB to the areas around Turtle Mountain itself, and possibly further south into the Dunseith ND area, might lead to historical amd acedemic growth for the area.

There was an old rail line that came across the border south west of Killarney, and passed through Boissevain on its way to Brandon. In the prohibition years it was popular with bootleggers moving illicit Canuck booze south to our thirsty Yankee kin.
Possibly this route could have been developed instead of the Soo Line which angled up from Portal ND to its terminus at Moose Jaw, Sk?

... A border city between MB and ND would be very interesting .... Just don't mess with what was one of my favorite drinking spots, The Bucket, right on the border between St. John ND and Lena, MB ....
 
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