Anselm never had a chance to grow. It was platted in 1891, ten years after Sheldon was started, and it was too near Enderlin, which as a division point on the Soo line grew rapidly between 1891 and 1900. For a time the steam engines, then in use on the Soo line, used to get their water tanks filled at Anselm, because the water in Enderlin was too hard for their boilers.
There was one elevator but it never had a large volume. A grocery store and post office was just about the extent of the town’s business. One big event in the life of Anselm was the shipment of several carloads of Basswood logs to a plywood mill in Wisconsin in the fifties.
Source: Ransom County History, by S.M. Thorfinnson,
Ransom County Historical Society, Publishers 1975
*Page last updated 5/16/2025