USA > Minnesota > Douglas County > History of Douglas and Grant counties, Minnesota : their people, industries, and institutions, Volume I > Part 35
USA > Minnesota > Grant County > History of Douglas and Grant counties, Minnesota : their people, industries, and institutions, Volume I > Part 35
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"Alexandria is environed by beautiful lakes-lakes which I obstinately : refuse to rhapsodize over, simply because there are so many and all deserve . it. To a promontory jutting out into one of these I took a seven-mile walk early one drizzly morning, with one of our party, accompanied by a hound, for which he had returned, to follow up the scent of a deer which he said . he had shot and badly wounded two hours before. We found the place- . the leaves were splashed with blood-gave the dog the scent, and followed.his wild running for two or three miles, but saw no deer and walked home in .. the rain. * First day's travel from Alexandria train made two and one-half miles. Best four-wheel wagon had all its spokes crushed out falling into some rut in a wood-road. Next day we got on a dozen miles farther to Chippewa crossing. A party of Chippewas were hunting and fishing in the vicinity. Two dusky boys watched us crossing from their canoe and laughed, I fancy, at white paddling. A shower came up, but
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DOUGLAS AND GRANT COUNTIES, MINNESOTA.
before the shallow lake had put on its goose-flesh to meet the raindrops, their paddles were out, and they skimmed the water, straight as a crow flies, through the rushes to the shelter of the trees which overhung the water, and there the canoe rested motionless again, and they watched us in silence. They had speared a half dozen buffalo fish and a plug of tobacco bought all we wanted for supper. * * The prairie from Alexandria to Otter Tail river was a very beautiful one, the hills moderately high, but of gentle slopes, their green, grassy sides flecked with wild flowers of a thousand brilliant or quiet hues, and then every mile or two a high swell of land from which we could look over these smaller undulations to the great green wave rising to its height again." And it was thus that this genial but anonymous traveler passed on out of what afterward came to be known as Douglas county on his way to the Pembina country and beyond, leav- ing a record of his impressions along the way that is invaluable today as a reflection of the country and of the condition of things in the days of the very beginning of a social order hereabout.
THE SIMS BROTHERS.
Among the most active of the early residents of Alexandria were the three brothers, Charles F., Lorenzo G. and George C. Sims, uncles of George L. Treat, of that city. The Sims brothers were natives of New York state, but early took up their residence in Minnesota, Charles F. Sims arriving at St. Paul in the spring of 1856. From 1861 to 1863 he was in the drug business at St. Anthony and in 1864 he joined Captain Fisk's expedi- tion of that year bound for Idaho. He later engaged in the milling business at St. Cloud and in 1866 he and his brother joined the last Fisk expedition west, returning to Minnesota in 1868. From 1869 to 1875 Charles F. Sims was in the employ of W. E. Hicks as manager of the latter's mills at Alex- andria, and in the fall of 1871 made two trips to Ft. Gary in the interests of the mill. In 1875 he went to California, three years later locating in Minneapolis, and in 1882 moved to Grand Forks, North Dakota, returning to Minneapolis in 1905, where he died on May 8, 1910. For a time during his residence in Alexandria he was postmaster of the village, as was also, later, his brother Lorenzo G. Sims, who located in Alexandria in 1867, remaining there engaged in the drug business until his departure about 1881 for Rosco, South Dakota, where he remained in business for about twenty years, at the end of which time he retired and moved to Minneapolis, where
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DOUGLAS AND GRANT COUNTIES, MINNESOTA.
he is now making his home. The third brother, George Sims, located at Alexandria in 1868 and was for some time employed in the old Hicks log store there, presently engaging in business for himself and was thus engaged until he sold out and went to Wisconsin. His death occurred in Chicago, October 22, 1898.
OLD PEOPLE'S HOME.
The Old People's Home of the Red River Valley Conference of the Augustana Lutheran church, now being erected near Alexandria, will be when completed one of the finest institutions of its kind in the state. The buildings are being erected on a naturally beautiful and desirable site, on the shore of Lake Winona, just west of the city of Alexandria, on ground donated by C. H. Raiter. They occupy a high rise of ground, commanding a view of a large oak grove, the grounds gently sloping to the lake shore.
The main building, of which the corner-stone was laid during the first week in September, 1916, is fifty-three by eighty-eight feet in dimensions. It has full basement, two floors of rooms and large attic. The main build- ing was ready for occupancy on November 1, 1916, and cost about twenty- five thousand dollars.
EARLY DAYS NEAR NELSON.
The following interesting reminiscence was written by C. H. Larson, the Nelson merchant, who has a vivid recollection of pioneer conditions in this neighborhood :
"We arrived in this county by mule-team from St. Cloud in November, 1868, stopping at the farm house of John A. Nelson that first winter. Some time during the winter a bear broke through an out shanty and stole a butchered pig from Mr. Nelson and, by the way, pigs were pigs in those days. In the spring of 1869 my grandmother walked through the wilder- ness for a week or ten days trying to find some small pigs and she finally found a farmer south of Melrose that had pigs and she persuaded him to sell her two which she carried in a basket and came home after traveling for about ten days. She was a very strong woman and for several sum- mers went with my father out in the harvest fields in English Grove, there being a settlement in that part in the early days. The settlers came in quite a few in the early seventies, homesteaded land in the Crooked Lake coun- try and what we called the Geneva Woods. We moved into our own shanty
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DOUGLAS AND GRANT COUNTIES, MINNESOTA.
in the early fall of 1869 and built a better house a year later made of hewn logs with moss between the logs and birch bark and dirt on the roof. These were the prevailing high-toned dwellings in those days; the poorer trash lived in holes in the ground or huts built of round logs.
"House-keeping was very easy in those days, one room made up for sit- ting room, dining room, bed room, kitchen and all the other rooms. Furni- ture consisted of a couple of hewn log benches, same for table, and logs nailed up in a corner for bed. Feed was potatoes, salt bread and butter, burnt bread, coffee and milk, and of course those that could shoot and had a gun could get game all they wanted, but my father had never shot a gun in his life but he finally bought one and I remembered plainly one evening we met a large buck but in place of shooting he stuck the gun in the air and hollered so the buck would not run over us. There was plenty of fish but there was no way of getting them except to get out in the water with a pitchfork and shovel them out, which some of the most enterprising did.
The mode of traveling in the early days was walking through mud and water knee deep in some places and through brush and thrash that was nearly impassable. In 1869 a path was cut through the woods to Alexan- dria called the Crooked Lake road. This was the outlet from East Bell river, Crooked Lake and the Geneva Woods settlement and connected with the so-called State Road some four miles east of Alexandria. In the winter of 1872 and 1873 railroad work was started and the settlers all wore a grin. This work kept up for about two years and then quit; some of the settlers cut some cord wood and ties and hauled out to the track expecting to sell-but nothing doing. The railroad company was busted. Then on top of all this drawback we had an Indian scare in the year 1876. Everybody expected to get killed; many people flocked into the village and barricaded themselves. We stayed on the farm; my stepfather got the broad-ax into the house and we barricaded the door, so we expected to decapitate at least some redskin before we were willing to give up. But no Indians came.
"When this scare was over the grasshoppers came and practically ate up everything, even the pitchfork handles. We would run over our little field of wheat with a clothes line, one man in each hand, to scare them off or at least keep them from continually eating; we saved some of our crop that way. Some people would dig ditches across the road to keep the small grasshoppers from going from one field to another. When the ditch was full of hoppers hay was put on them and set afire to, burning them up. The government furnished coal tar and many used to run little carts across the field in the spring and capture hoppers in this way.
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DOUGLAS AND GRANT COUNTIES, MINNESOTA.
"Finally, some years later, the railroad was finished and cars came along. The engine toots was sweet music to the settlers. Wood chopping and hauling was the going business in those days and every shack in the woods was full of wood choppers and haulers; prairie farmers coming in from all over the country buying stumpage, put up shacks and spending the winters that way.
"The first minister that I can remember came in here in the spring of 1869, stopping at a farm in Crooked Lake and preaching in several of the homestead shacks around. There was a small Swede paper printed in Chicago that was circulated around in the early days. In this paper the minister I spoke about above wrote about his trip here. He said: 'I stopped at a place in Crooked Lake one night. I got mush in a wooden bowl, milk in a wooden bowl and ate with another wooden bowl and butchered all night.' The bedbugs were very active in the log shacks in those days and the more sensitive people had a hard time to sleep. The Crooked Lake church was built a year or two later. It was quite up-to-date for those times. It was built of hewn logs, had several windows in it and had two iron rods run- ning across the building to keep the logs from bulging out. The benches were hewn planks put on log standards, cut from round legs so they were quite substantial but hard on the back, as the ministers in those days never preached less than four hours at one sitting. Reverend Lundblad, of Park- ers Prairie, was the first minister that preached regularly in the Crooked Lake church. The people came to church in their blue overalls and what we called in those days government boots, but they were all happy and con- tented and I doubt if the people of our day are as satisfied as those settlers of the early day. Most of them walked to church and the better class would drive a team of oxen when the roads were passable.
"The first school in district No. 22 was held in my grandfather's hut, in the summer of 1873. A Mr. Fred Leasure taught the school, having about four scholars when all attended, but mostly only myself, as I am a sticker and attended the three months every day. I learned the A, B, C's and to talk a little English and how to kill snakes successfully. Crushing the head done the business. The next year a log school house was built on the Crooked Lake road, on section 14. The first term we had many teachers, most of them staying only a few days. Mr. C. J. Gunderson was the first successful one we had and even he had to take a layoff for several weeks during the term but was ably substituted with his sister, Mrs. Van Hoesen.
"The Swedish church in Alexandria was organized about 1878 and
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DOUGLAS AND GRANT COUNTIES, MINNESOTA.
we shared the church with the Norwegians for many years, finally buying them out. Reverend Lind was our first minister in Alexandria, having Alex- andria, Crooked Lake and Ida congregations, and from then everything has gone merrily on."
GRANT COUNTY COURT HOUSE, ELBOW LAKE.
GRANT COUNTY MINNESOTA
CHAPTER I.
GEOLOGY AND TOPOGRAPHY.
Grant county lies in western Minnesota, in the second range of counties east from Lakes Traverse and Big Stone. Elbow lake, in the central part, is the county seat. The county is square, measuring four townships, or twenty-four miles, from east to west, and the same from north to south. The area of the county is 578.28 square miles, or 370,099.24 acres, of which about twenty thousand acres are covered by water.
SURFACE FEATURES.
The west half of Grant county is included within the basin of the Red River of the North, being drained to Lake Traverse by the Mustinka river and its tributaries. The rest of this county is drained to the Minnesota river, mainly by the Pomme de Terre, which flows very directly from north to south through the east half of the county. The Chippewa river, however, flows nearly parallel with the Pomme de Terre river, and only four or five miles east of it, through the southeast edge of Grant county.
Lakes are numerous in the county excepting in the western portion thereof. They range in size from the smallest, a few rods in diameter, to Pelican lake, which covers approximately six square miles, in the most north- east township of Grant county, to which its name is given. Elk lake and Elbow lake also give their names to the townships in which they occur. Its other most noteworthy lakes are Pomme de Terre lake, through which the river of this name flows, Lightning lake in Stony Brook township, Cormor-
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DOUGLAS AND GRANT COUNTIES, MINNESOTA.
ant lake and Barnett lake in Lien township, and a group of a dozen small lakes within five miles east and southeast from Herman.
Grant county has mostly an undulating or rolling surface, rising in smooth, massive swells ten to thirty or sometimes fifty feet above the hol- lows and lakes. Seen in a view of wide extent, however, the appearance is that of an approximately level plain. The valleys or channels eroded by these streams are from fifty to seventy-five feet deep, and vary from a quarter to a half of a mile, or rarely, where the Pomme de Terre river flows through lakes, one and a half miles in width.
The northeastern third is more prominently rolling than other parts of the county; and rough morainic knolls and hills border the north side of Pelican lake and extend westward into the northeast corner of Pomme de Terre township. These are the southwest edge of the great morainic tract called the Leaf hills. Within the limits of this county they attain only slight altitudes, fifty to one hundred and fifty feet above Pelican lake and Lake Christina, or about twelve hundred and fifty to thirteen hundred and fifty feet above the sea.
In the western range of townships of Grant county the area that was occupied by the glacial Lake Agassiz, as described in a later part of this chapter, is characterized by a much more smoothed and even surface than the other parts of the district toward the east and sonth, this being the margin of the very flat, broad expanse which reaches thence west to the Bois des Sioux river and north along the Red River valley to Winnipeg.
ELEVATIONS.
The following elevations were taken on the old St. Paul, Minneapolis & Manitoba Railway, from profiles in the office of Col. C. C. Smith, engineer, St. Paul :
Fergus Falls Line.
Feet above
the sca.
Outlet from Lake Christina to Pelican lake, water, 1,213; grade 1,225
Interlaken
1,228
Ashby
1,29I
Summit near Ashby, cutting ten feet ; grade.
1,294
Pelican creek, water, 1236; grade.
1,249
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DOUGLAS AND GRANT COUNTIES, MINNESOTA.
Breckinridge Line.
Hancock
1,155
Summit, cutting only one foot ; grade
1,172
Pomme de Terre river, water, 1,066; grade
1,078
Junction of Brown's Valley branch
1,120
Morris
1,129
Summit, grade
1,156
Donnelly
1,124
Herman 1,070
Upper beach Lake Agassiz, cut six feet ; grade
1,060
Norcross, on lower beach of Lake Agassiz.
1.039
Mustinka creek, water, 1,018; grade.
1,026
1
E
1
1
I
1
I
The highest land of Grant county, in Pelican Lake and Erdahl townships, is about thirteen hundred and fifty feet above the sea and its lowest land, on its west boundary, is about ten hundred and ten feet above the sea. Estimates of the average heights of the townships of Grant county are as follows : Pelican Lake, twelve hundred and seventy-five feet; Erdahl, twelve hundred and seventy-five; Elk Lake, twelve hundred and fifty; Land, twelve hundred and twenty-five; Pomme de Terre, twelve hundred and forty; Sanford, twelve hundred and twenty; Lien, eleven hundred and eighty; Roseville, eleven hundred and sixty: Stony Brook, eleven hundred and sixty; Elbow. Lake, eleven hundred and forty; Delaware, ten hundred and ninety; Macs- ville, ten hundred and ninety; Lawrence, ten hundred and fifty; North Otta- wa, ten hundred and thirty-five, and Logan, ten hundred and fifty. The mean elevation of Grant county, from these figures, is eleven hundred and fifty-five feet.
SOIL AND TIMBER.
A black loam soil extends everywhere one to four feet deep. This is the enriched upper part of the glacial drift, which below forms the subsoil, having a yellowish color, due to weathering, to a depth of ten to twenty feet, beyond which it has a darker and bluish color. Clay, sand and gravel, with occasional boulders, intermingled in an unstratified manner (clay being the predominant ingredient), constitute the greater part of this formation. With this boulder-clay, till, or hardpan. as it is called, are associated comparatively thin and scanty deposits of stratified gravel and sand, which occur as layers
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DOUGLAS AND GRANT COUNTIES, MINNESOTA.
in the till, or rarely in knolls or swells on its surface, also in flat tracts on the bottom lands of the larger streams, and in beach-ridges on the borders of Lake Agassiz.
The county is wholly prairie, with timber only in small groves besides many of the lakes and in a very narrow belt along portions of the rivers and creeks. Basswood, bur-oak, white and red elm, silver maple, box-elder, wild plum, green ash, hackberry, ironwood, poplar and cottonwood are the prin- cipal species of trees.
GEOLOGICAL STRUCTURE.
The drift-sheet, consisting chiefly of till, and probably varying from one hundred to two hundred feet in depth, covers the county and wholly conceals the bed-rocks. Beneath the drift are doubtless in many places de- posits of Cretaceous age, similar to those outcropping in Brown, Redwood, Lyon and Stearns counties; but under these, or, where they are absent, imme- diately underlying the drift, Archaen rocks are believed to occupy this whole district, at a depth of a few hundred feet.
A well drilled for the railroad at Herman passed through one hundred and twenty-four feet of till, and then went sixty-five feet in rock. The first seven or eight feet of the rock was the fine-grained, buff, magnesian lime- stone, boulders of which are common throughout northwestern Minnesota. Professor Winchell thinks it probable that this portion was a compacted mass of boulders. "The nearest outcrops of this rock in the direction from which the drift came, are near Winnipeg in Manitoba. The remaining fifty- seven feet were evidently in Archaen rocks, being quartzose granite, with red feldspar ; white micaceous quartzyte ; and mica schiist of several varieties.
The glacial drift forming the surface of this county has the same smoothly undulating or rolling contour which characterizes the greater part of the Minnesota basin. Its only portion presenting the rough, irregularly grouped, stony knolls and hills of terminal moraines in northeastern Grant county, including Pelican Lake, some parts of Erdahl and the northeast corner of Pomme de Terre township. These morainic accumulations belong to the time of the eighth or Fergus Falls moraine. The ice-sheet appears to have lain upon this district until its recession from the seventh or Dovre moraine, when it was melted back from Swift and Big Stone counties to Fergus Falls and the Leaf hills in Otter Tail county.
The gravel on the bottom land of the Pomme de Terre river is about
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DOUGLAS AND GRANT COUNTIES, MINNESOTA.
half limestone; and nearly the same proportion holds for the gravel of lake- shores and for that contained in the till. A much less proportion of the large boulders is limestone, perhaps not more than a twentieth generally, and in some localities scarcely a hundredth, the remainder being granite, syenite, gneiss and crystalline schists. But in section 31, Elk Lake township, about a dozen limestone blocks, three to eight feet in size, were seen together one to three rods west of the road, much outnumbering the comparatively small granitic boulders that could be counted on the same space.
The valleys of the Pomme de Terre and Chippewa rivers, fifty to one hundred feet deep along most of their course, and one-fourth mile to one mile or occasionally more in width, were avenues of drainage from the melting ice-fields in their northward retreat. By these glacial floods the Pomme de Terre valley was eroded below its present depth, and the subse- quent alluvial deposits brought in by tributaries and washed down from adjoining bluffs by the springs in their ravines, have filled some portions higher than others, so that depressions not thus filled hold the Pomme de Terre and Little Pomme de Terre lakes.
LAKE AGASSIZ.
Lake Agassiz, formed in the basin of the Red river by the barrier of the ice-sheet, extended into the northwest part of Eldorado, the most northwest township of Stevens county, and its upper beach continues thence northward through Grant county, lying four to six miles east of the county line. On the area occupied by this glacial lake, the surface is notably smoothed and nearly flat. Its material here is mainly till, in some places showing indistinct marks of stratification due to the leveling action of the lake, but containing sand and gravel and frequent boulders, and much more properly classed as till than as modified drift. No lakes are now found on this part of the area that was covered by Lake Agassiz, but it has occasional sloughis, sometimes a mile or more in extent. Besides the upper or Herman beach of this lake. which is crossed by the Great Northern railway one and one-half miles north- west of Herman, its next lower or Norcross beach is well exhibited through the west range of townships of Grant county, being crossed by this railway at Norcross, five miles northwest of Herman. These beaches consist of gravel and sand, each being a low, flattened ridge, ten to twenty to one hun- dred rods wide, three to ten feet above the adjoining land on the side away from the lake, and having a descent of ten to twenty feet on the other side.
.
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DOUGLAS AND GRANT COUNTIES, MINNESOTA.
The outlet of Lake Agassiz flowed in the remarkable channel or valley which now contains Lakes Traverse and Big Stone and the Minnesota river. At the time when the upper beach was formed, its mouth was about eighty feet above the present surface of Lake Traverse, or ten hundred and fifty feet above the sea. The Norcross beach in Grant county is one to three miles west of the upper or Herman beach and about thirty feet lower, show- ing that the outlet of the lake had eroded its channel considerably during the time between the stages recorded by these beach ridges.
The following notes were taken in connection with the work of mapping these beaches and leveling to determine their elevation :
UPPER OR HERMAN BEACH.
The beach ridge is well displayed in the northwest quarter of section 19, Eldorado township, in Stevens county, having an elevation of about ten hundred and sixty-three feet above the sea. Its height is seven to ten feet above the land next west, and five feet above the depression next east. The surface on each side.is till, slowly falling westward and rising eastward.
Beach in the northwest part of section 27, Logan township, having an elevation of ten hundred and sixty-seven to ten hundred and sixty-nine feet; in the southwest quarter of section 22, ten hundred and sixty-seven; in the north part of this section 22, and the south part of section 15, Logan town- ship, forming a broad, smoothly rounded gravel-ridge, ten hundred and sixty- eight to ten hundred and seventy-one.
Beach near the middle of section 15, Logan township, about thirty rods wide, with a broad nearly flat top, ten hundred and seventy ; having a descent of about fifteen feet on its northwest side to the area of Lake Agassiz, and half as much on the southeast, thence rising very gradually in the one and one-half miles eastward to Herman. This ridge is gravel; the land at each side, till.
Beach equally well exhibited, at the southeast corner of section 10, and in the southwest part of section II, Logan township, ten hundred and sixty- nine to ten hundred and seventy-one; and in this section II, at the railroad, and for fifty rods southwestward, ten hundred and sixty-four to ten hundred and sixty-six. In the cut through this beach-ridge for the railroad, its material is sand and gravel, containing pebbles up to two or three inches in diameter, half or two-thirds being limestone.
Depression forty rods wide next southeast at the railroad, lowest twenty
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