St. Croix Riverway Time and the River: A History of the Saint Croix

CHAPTER 3:
"The New Land": Settlement and the Development of Agriculture in the St. Croix Valley (continued)

The Swedish Frontier

On the Minnesota side of the St. Croix opposite the Osceola area stood another forested region with a series of beautiful, pristine lakes to the west. The Chisago Lakes area, as it has been called, provides another example of settlement and the beginnings of agriculture along the St. Croix. When pioneers made it to Taylors Falls, they reached the head of navigation on the river. There they disembarked into the most splendid scenery along the river. The colorful Dalles rock formations soared from fifty to two hundred and fifty feet straight up. While land along the river was either bought up by speculators or under the control of logging interests, much of the inland lakes region could still be squatted on or bought at the government rate of $1.25 per acre. Within a decade the area attracted scores of Scandinavians that would eventually make this region the largest Swedish-speaking rural area outside of Sweden. This nearly exclusive dominance of one ethnic group was unusual not only for the St. Croix Valley but for the entire country. [82]

What made this concentration possible was that the Chisago Lakes was off-the-beaten path for westward migration. Most pioneers preferred the prairie and hardwood forests to the south along the river. The soil was rich and the timber supplied fuel and housing material. Coniferous forests to the north were known to have stony, acid soils with little organic materials that were not suitable for agriculture. The Chisago Lakes area, however, was in the transition zone between the hardwood forests in the south and the coniferous forests of the north in what is called the "mixed forest." Most settlers assumed the land was infertile. The Chisago area, however, was deceptive. Glacial sediment had enriched the soil. This fact only needed to be discovered, and it was a handful of Swedish immigrants who first realized this. Through letters to their homeland or to other Swedish-American communities, they began one of the most exclusive chain migrations to one area in the United States. [83]

Scandia became the first settlement of Swedes in Minnesota. In 1850, Carl Ferstrom, Oscar Roos, and August Sandahl claimed a forty acres site near Hay Lake. While they chose to move on the following year, they sold their farm to another Swedish immigrant, Daniel Nilson. His home formed the nucleus of the growing Swedish community. These pioneers grew corn, potatoes, and rye, their first year. Letters back home to Sweden brought more and more immigrants to the area. By 1855, there was a cohesive Swedish community in Scandia. [84]

Eric Norberg was one of the first Swedes to come to the Chisago Lake. He had been in America since 1842 and decided to explore the Minnesota Territory after the land office was set up on the St. Croix. In his travels, Norberg had made the acquaintance of Gustaf Unonius, a bishop of the Swedish Episcopal St. Ansgarius Congregation in Chicago. Unonius was very devoted to assisting Swedish immigrants find a good life in America and was constantly on the lookout for better opportunities. When he heard Norberg was heading north, he asked him to send a report. In 1851, Norberg wrote to Unonius that Minnesota would make a better settlement for Swedes than Illinois. He wrote, "West of Taylors Falls. . .there are many lakes, streams, and rivers, and a better place for a large settlement I have hardly ever seen." He urged Unonius to send Swedish immigrants here. The first group of Swedish farmers arrived by steamboat in June 1851 and promptly cut a road from Taylors Falls through the woods to the lake region. In this more remote area they could take advantage of the pre-emption law and claim this uninhabited land for themselves. They also found the resemblance to their homeland appealing and comforting. Within five to six years nearly all of the government land in the Chisago Lakes area was claimed, almost entirely by Swedes. [85]

This Swedish community, however, remained fairly isolated for years because of its remoteness and lack of a main highway or railroad as well as its dependence upon the use of a common foreign language. The first farmers came with the simplest farming skills. "We were on the whole a poorly selected company as none of us was skilled in any trade," wrote Oscar Roos. "None of us could cut hay to feed our oxen." [86] Most did not have draft animals and lived at a subsistence level, living off the wild game and fish in the surrounding woods. They initially grew white and brown beans, hay, and rutabagas. Later on they began to grow potatoes, corn, and small grains, and garden vegetables. The men and older boys often hired themselves out to logging companies in the winter as a way to earn cash. Once they were able to acquire a cow, butter and cheese making became a means to barter for store bought products, such as sugar and coffee. Chickens and hogs were added later. Their first customers were the logging companies along the river. It would, however, take many years before they would join in exporting wheat or other products like the farmers down river. [87]

Despite their aloofness the Swedes were well regarded. "The Swedes are a moral class of people," wrote one observer. "They are very industrious and strictly honest. They attend to their own business, and let the balance of mankind attend to their own." While preferring to speak their own language amongst themselves, the Swedish community made English a priority for their children, which pleased the native Americans. "We learn with pleasure that English is taught to all the children. . .it behooves them to instruct their offspring so as to fit them for the community in which they live. A very good idea." [88]

In the 1850s, settlements and the beginnings of agriculture penetrated as far north as Sunrise. "Its advantages in an agricultural point of view are first rate," wrote one settler. "It has an excellent range for cattle, and abundance of timber of every sort. . .excellent bottom, meadow and upland." The local pineries provided an eager and profitable market. "For doing business with the lumbering interest this point has a decided advantage on account of its proximity to the pineries." Farmers here could sell their goods at "Stillwater prices" and take the added advantage of the "transportation" markup without having to transport goods upriver and still have competitive prices. [89]

The St. Croix's Valley's prosperity was also supplemented by catering to migrants who disembarked at the steamboat landings along the river with plans to head further west. After the Sioux treaties were signed in 1853, Minnesota's southwest territory became open for settlement. Hopeful settlers crowded steamboats that plied the Mississippi, the Minnesota, and the St. Croix Rivers. In 1855, the St. Croix Union wrote, "The immigration to Minnesota the present season bids fair to be immensely large, exceeding by many thousands that of any preceding year. . .On Thursday evening last. . .Capt. Smith estimated the number of the emigrants that the packets had then taken up the river to be at least four thousand." [90] Towns along these waterways hustled to assist and provision these sojourners before they continued their westward trek on new government roads. [91] The Log House at Log House Landing in Otisville, Minnesota, which is twelve miles north of Stillwater was the site of a steamboat landing. Immigrants dispersed from here to their new found homesteads. The Franconia Historic District, two and a half miles south of Taylors Falls, also contains pioneer settlement homes, a flourmill, and a sawmill. The village of Taylor Falls has many historic buildings from this era as well. [92] The bustling activity of the Taylor Falls and St. Croix Falls area became so great that in 1854 prominent residents formed the St. Croix Bridge Company. By 1856, the bridge was built. It "has a span of 150 feet and is a light and graceful structure," wrote W.H.C. Folsom, and "was the first bridge that spanned the St. Croix and Mississippi rivers." [93]

The population along the St. Croix had grown at such a clip that in 1853 the Wisconsin legislature created two additional counties out of St. Croix County — Pierce to the south with Prescott as its county seat and Polk County to the north with St. Croix Falls its seat. On the Minnesota side of the river, the influx of settlers prompted a movement to create Chisago County north of Washington as early as the fall of 1851. By January 1852 the first county commissioners' meeting was held at Taylors Falls, the new seat of government for Chisago County. [94] Minnesota's white population swelled to 150,037. Easterners accounted for at least two-thirds of this number, while the other third was made up of Irish, Germans, English, and Canadians, with some Scandinavians. This was more than enough for Minnesota to enter the Union in 1858, less than a decade after it became a territory. [95]

Figure 27. The mouth of the St. Croix River as it would have been seen by settlers arriving by steamboat. From an 1848 oil painting by Henry Lewis.