Cloud and found Whitford's lapsed claim, purchased the land, and built what is now the Central Dam in downtown Fergus Falls around 1871.

After Wright died in 1882, his son Vernon moved from Boston to Minnesota and took over his father's interests in the town.

Fergus Falls features different parks, including tallgrass prairie and eastern woodlands, stores, and other tourist attractions.

The city also lends its name to the song "Fergus Falls" by the band Field Report on its 2012 self-titled album.

Fergus Falls received international coverage in early 2017 [10] and late 2018 after a news article in Der Spiegel falsely claimed there was an anti-Mexican sign at the city's entrance and fabricated other things about the town.

[12][13][14] In December 2018 two residents of Fergus Falls, Michele Anderson and Jake Krohn, published a report pointing out the "11 most absurd lies" of the 2017 article.

[16] A strong economic division between later Scandinavian immigrant farmers and the earlier English and Scottish war veterans who retained control of the principal businesses of the city center, the banks, and the increasingly important Otter Tail Power Company, persisted for decades until several generations of ethnic intermarriage and continuing inward and outward migration largely erased the divisions along ethnic lines.

[citation needed] The dams built on the Otter Tail River beginning in the 1880s were powerful economic forces that shaped the area's development.

Returning soldiers from the American Civil War settled in the region, mostly as farmers (wheat and corn in the western plains and dairy and hogs in the eastern hills and forests).

The early English wave of settlement claimed control of the falls along the Otter Tail River and established the first Episcopalian and Presbyterian churches.

Almost as soon as the foundational structure of the town was laid, an influx of Norwegian immigrants arrived, by way of the Scandinavian migration of Chicago and Minneapolis, often on the Great Northern Railway.

The Lutheran Brethren (Church of the Lutheran Brethren of America) established an academy in Fergus Falls, which today operates a private high school, theological seminary and mission society, with an office in Fergus Falls.

After the Interstate Defense Highway System built Interstate 94 along the western edge of Fergus Falls in the late 1950s, population mobility increased dramatically, and high school graduates increasingly left the town to attend colleges in Morris, Fargo-Moorhead, or the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and Saint Paul.

The bucolic environment, with abundant sporting opportunities that had long attracted summer vacationers.

Fergus Falls is a micropolitan with a diversified economy that includes healthcare, manufacturing, commercial, agricultural, information technology, and utilities.

The largest employer is Lake Region Healthcare, an integrated health system with a 108-bed hospital, cancer research center, assisted living community, and multiple clinics.

In the early 1990s, after several decades of change and transition, over $1 million was raised to renovate the theater and A Center for the Arts was founded.

The Lake Region Arts Council serves 9 counties (Becker, Clay, Otter Tail, Wilkin, Traverse, Stevens, Grant, and Pope) and has its main office in the River Inn Building in Fergus Falls.

Their programs and services are made possible through an appropriation from the Minnesota State Legislature, Legacy Arts & Cultural Heritage Fund and the McKnight Foundation.

The band Field Report has a song named after Fergus Falls on their eponymous debut album.