The Grand Forks Fire Department is one of the longest continuously serving fire departments around. A year after the people organized as a village, on May 6 , 1879, they established the fire department. In January the following year, George Walsh, President of the Village Board, held a meeting to discuss equipment for the department. And on this date, the village welcomed a horse-drawn Champion Fire Engine as its first piece of firefighting equipment. It was a simple two-wheeled apparatus with a