Little more than a whistle stop on the south bank of Crab Creek, with a siding, a warehouse, a grain elevator, and a few stores and houses. Before WWI, the settlement was called Krupp by the Great Northern Railway to please a very influential farmer called Eckhart, who they thought was German.  He turned out to be a Scot named Urquhart and when the U.S. became involved in WWI and many German names were dropped due to feelings arising from the conflict the place was renamed Marlin, after the first settler, John Marlin, who arrived in 1871.