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

CHAPTER 4:
Up North: The Development of Recreation in the St. Croix Valley (continued)

Tourism in the Ante-bellum Years

Although it was the glowing accounts of the St. Croix's abundant natural resources that enticed the first permanent settlers to the region, tourists also began venturing into the St. Croix Valley to enjoy its natural splendors in the first half of the nineteenth century. "It was the Mississippi and its steamboats that inaugurated the trade and spread the fame of Minnesota as a vacation land," wrote historian Theodore C. Blegen, "promising to the enterprising tourist the adventure of a journey to a remote frontier coupled with the enjoyment of picturesque scenery and of good fishing and hunting." The first steamboat tourist to Minnesota was an Italian named Giacomo Beltrami who made the trip in 1823. He found the scenery and towering bluffs comparable to the beauty of the Rhine River. [4]

When Henry Schoolcraft documented the St. Croix River in 1832 for the U.S. Government, the river truly joined the ranks of the picturesque rivers of the world. "Its banks are high and afford a series of picturesque views," he wrote. In 1837, Joseph N. Nicollet, a French expatriate, followed Schoolcraft's path exploring and mapping the Northwest Territories. He, too, was struck by Lake St. Croix's beauty. "The shores are rugged and steep, interrupted by lovely, sheltering coves," he related. "The shallows are plentiful. It is indeed a picturesque river." [5]

The first person, however, to recommend the Upper Mississippi Valley to tourists was George Catlin, a self-trained artist from Philadelphia. Catlin's ambition was to visually record North American Indians in their natural environment before they "vanished." In 1835 and 1836, he ventured into the Old Northwest Territory to record the Sioux Indians. Catlin was so enamored by the country that he encouraged a "Fashionable Tour" of a steamboat trip from St. Louis to the Falls of St. Anthony. He wrote:

This Tour would comprehend but a small part of the great, "Far West;" but it will furnish to the traveler a fair sample, and being a part of it which is now made so easily accessible to the world, and the only part of it to which ladies can have access, I would recommend to all who have time and inclination to devote to the enjoyment of so splendid a Tour, to wait not, but make it while the subject is new, and capable of producing the greatest degree of pleasure. [6]

Many adventuresome travelers responded to Catlin's recommendation and began to take fashionable tours of the Upper Mississippi River. In 1837, the widow of Alexander Hamilton, Elizabeth Schuyler Hamilton, took the tour to Fort Snelling from the Falls of St. Anthony. She, of course, was given a royal welcome by the soldiers at the fort. When she returned to the East, she gave her stamp of approval for the "Fashionable Tour." It was, however, more the artists of the period who painted the Upper Mississippi Valley that enticed crowds to come here. In 1839, John Rowson Smith and John Risley painted a panorama of the Upper Valley, with which they then toured the country. The panorama was invented in England by Robert Barker in the latter half of the eighteenth century. There were several huge canvases done of landscapes. To transport them the canvases were rolled up into scrolls. These scrolls were then presented to the public by unrolling them in order one at a time or by displaying them in their entirety as a cyclorama. In the summer of 1848 Henry Lewis painted a panorama of the Mississippi between St. Louis and Fort Snelling that included scenes of the St. Croix. Lewis's painting "Gorge of the St. Croix," the first steamboat landing in the Dalles, and "Cheever's Mill," the beginnings of St. Croix Falls, were twelve feet high and twelve hundred yards long. His completed work of the Mississippi from the Falls of St. Anthony to New Orleans took up 45,000 square feet of canvas. Within a decade at least eight to ten panoramas of the Upper Mississippi toured the country. [7]

Honeymooning couples, small parties, and even groups of a hundred or more, soon made traveling the Upper Mississippi River a popular pastime. Some even chartered their own boats to avoid the immigrant throngs and freight stops common on the usual steamboat runs up river. Tourists came from as far south as New Orleans, and when rail service reached the Mississippi from Chicago, Pittsburgh, New York, Boston, and even Europe. Artists and writers found the region inspiring and prominent politicians and journalists, such as Millard Fillmore and Thurlow Weed of New York, as well as other dignitaries made the Upper Mississippi an important stop on their travel itineraries. River towns made them feel like honored guests by welcoming them with gala receptions. It was the rare exception for a traveler up the Mississippi not to be struck by the beauty and grandeur of the scenery both by day and night, and to be fascinated by the first-hand glimpse of Indians in their traditional life. [8] "Indian Watching" was a unique attraction of a trip up the Upper Mississippi and St. Croix River and could be done in "safety." A Dubuque newspaper advertised the trip as a "convenient and certain" way to watch Indians living in their native world. [9]

During the summer of 1849, the travel writer Ephraim S. Seymour of New York State made his "Fashionable Steamboat Tour" of the Upper Mississippi River. He followed the usual path of tourists by starting in St. Louis. He made a stop in Galena and then traveled up river to Fort Snelling and the Falls of St. Anthony. Unlike other tourists who stayed on the Mississippi, Seymour ventured into the St. Croix Valley and set about collecting information on Indians and lumbering as well as describing in detail the scenery from the Willow River to St. Croix Falls. In 1850, he published Sketches of Minnesota, the New England of the West, which introduced the scenic splendor of St. Croix Valley to the American reading public. Seymour was also the first to promote the healthful benefits of the climate from ills such as ague, which plagued more southern climes, as well as consumption. In his book, Seymour related an encounter he had with an old friend from Galena whose health had been impaired by repeated attacks of cholera. The friend hoped a trip up river to Minnesota might restore his health. "A few days spent in sporting and fishing among the brooks, rivers, and lakes of this bracing climate," Seymour proclaimed, "had rendered him quite robust and healthy." And he advised that, "Such excursions might be recommended to many invalids, as far superior to quack medicines and expensive nostrums." [10]

During the 1840s northerners began to lure southerners away from the lower latitude resorts that they had patronized, such as the Virginia Springs and the Harrodsburg Springs of Kentucky. Some venturesome southern residents had also escaped from the oppressive heat of the South into the Hudson Valley and Niagara Falls. In 1842, Daniel Drake wrote The Northern Lakes: A Summer Resort for Invalids of the South that encouraged southerners to explore the Great Lakes region aboard ship. Drake claimed that by coming north of the 44 degree line of latitude one could escape "the region of miasms, musquitos (sic), congestive fevers, liver diseases, jaundice, cholera morbus, dyspepsia, blue devil and duns!" The gentle rolling of the boat and cool lake breezes, he claimed, could cure hysteria and even hypochondraism. But before the era of widespread rail linkups, the Great Lakes were not easily accessible to those in the South. However, the Upper Mississippi River's "Fashionable Tour" was an attractive alternative with all the same healthful benefits. [11]

By the 1850s, the St. Croix attracted its share of travel writers and artists. In 1852, Edward Sullivan published Rambles and Scrambles in North and South America that described his adventurous canoe trip down the Brule and St. Croix Rivers. And in 1853, Elizabeth F. Ellet traveled up the St. Croix in the comfort of a side-wheeler steamboat with thirty staterooms to "explore" the frontier. Her explorations resulted in the travelogue, Summer Rambles in the West, which eloquently described in picturesque terminology the scenery of the Dalles and the Lower St. Croix Valley. She wrote of the Dalles:

Within a short distance of the termination of our voyage, a scene presented itself which nothing on the Upper Mississippi can parallel. The stream enters a wild, narrow gorge, so deep and dark, that the declining sun is quite shut out; perpendicular walls of traprock, scarlet and chocolate-colored, and gray with the mass of centuries, rising from the water, are piled in savage grandeur on either side, to a height of from one hundred to two hundred feet above our heads, their craggy summits thinly covered with tall cedars and pines, which stand upright at intervals on their sides, adding to the wild and picturesque effect; the river hemmed in and overhung by the rocky masses, rushes impetuously downward, and roars in the caverns and its worn by the action of the chafed waters. These sheer and awful precipices, mirrored in the waters, are here broken into massive fragments, there stand in architectural regularity, like vast columns reared by art; or some gigantic buttress uplifts itself in front of the cliffs, like a ruined tower of primeval days. [12]

Through the 1850s and into the 1880s, the St. Croix attracted local artists well versed in the picturesque. Robert Sweeny was a St. Paul pharmacist turned artist. In 1858, the Minnesota Historical Society commissioned him to paint flowers, plants, and Indian artifacts. He then turned his attention to the St. Croix and painted in a documentary-like fashion the lumber mill sloughs at St. Croix Falls, the wood arch bridge over the river at Taylors Falls, and Indians coming ashore on Lake St. Croix, and the Dalles. His paintings and sketches depict the picturesque qualities of the wilderness. Augustus O. Moore followed Sweeny. His sketches aimed to show that in the St. Croix Valley man and nature could live harmoniously. Another artist of the St. Croix was Elijah E. Edwards who was principal of the Chisago Seminary, as well as clergyman, professor, and writer. Many of his painting and sketches were of the Dalles with an eye for light and romantic views, but they also included sketches of the other rivers and water falls in the valley. Many of these paintings and sketches can by found in the Minnesota Historical Society collection. [13] While these artists recorded and interpreted the St. Croix River, their influence only extended to the local region in attracting visitors.

By the mid-nineteenth century many towns along the river, such as Prescott, Hudson, Stillwater, Osceola, and Taylors Falls provided hotel accommodations for both new settlers and some venturesome tourists. Tourism in the St. Croix Valley got a boost from the Twin Cities when John P. Owens, the editor of the St. Paul Minnesotan, took an excursion on the steamboat, Humbolt, in 1853. "The little Humbolt is a great accommodation to the people of the St. Croix," he wrote. "She stops anywhere along the river to do any and all kinds of business that may offer, and will give passengers a longer ride, so far as time is concerned, for a dollar, than any other craft we ever traveled upon." The boat graciously stopped at Marine Mills to allow its hungry travelers to lunch at the Marine House. Owen also stopped in Taylors Falls and made an assessment of this town's accommodations. "This Chisago House, is better furnished, and as well kept — barring the inconvenience of having no meat and vegetable market at hand — as any house in St. Paul, St. Anthony, or Stillwater," he wrote. "We never hated to leave a place so much in our life, when absent from home." [14]

By the mid-1850s, the St. Croix Valley had a good introduction to the traveling public. Minnesota, however, courted tourists more aggressively to its "Land of Ten Thousand Lakes" than did Wisconsin. Therefore, the valley remained off the beaten path for most tourists. As early as the 1850s Minnesota was determined to create recreational retreats that could rival eastern resorts, such as Saratoga Springs in New York State. Many hoped it would become the playground of the wealthy. Minnesota historian Theodore Blegen has written that tourism in Minnesota began with the establishment of journalism in the territory. "Every newspaper was a tourist bureau," he claimed. James M. Goodhue, the editor of the Minnesota Pioneer, was a leading booster of the recreational attractions of the territory. He made appeals to residents all along the Mississippi to escape the epidemics of cholera and malaria that plague southern climes for the healthy air and cool breezes of the North Country. "'Hurry along through the valley of the Mississippi, its shores studded with towns. . .flying by islands, prairies, woodlands, bluffs — an ever varied scene of beauty, away up into the land of the wild Dakota, and of cascades and pine forests, and cooling breezes.'" [15] John W. Bond, the premiere pamphlet promoter for Minnesota, wrote in 1853 "we have springs equal to any in the world." Rather than lure easterners, however, the ease of travel up the Mississippi made the target audience southerners. "Gentlemen residing in New Orleans can come here by a quick and delightful conveyance," Bond explained, "and bring all that is necessary to make their living comfortable in the summer months, and a trifling expense. For a small sum of money they can purchase a few acres of land on the river and build summer cottages." Bond intended to promote the Falls of St. Anthony, which he believed would "rank with Saratoga, Newport, and the White Mountains in New Hampshire. [16] In 1854, Earl S. Goodrich, the editor of the St. Paul Pioneer, beckoned southerners to the cooler, more refreshing northern retreats with biblical allusions. "Miserable sun-burned denizens of the torrid zone," he wrote, "come to Minnesota all ye that are roasting and heavy laden and we will give you rest." [17]

Travel writing, art, and real estate promotion all blended together in the effort to highlight Minnesota. By the late 1850s, Minnesota's beautiful lakes and streams were painted by Edwin Whitefield. Whitefield had also done landscapes and residences in the Hudson River Valley and the Mississippi River. By 1856, his travels brought him to St. Paul. As an artist and newly established land speculator, Whitefield captured the beauty and promoted Minnesota lakes and land through his paintings. Within the next few decades many tourists left the fashionable river tours and explored a Minnesota where ghosts of Indians and explorers still lingered. [18]

Despite its scenic beauty, however, the St. Croix was primarily a working river. The only means of travel was by steamboat, and what boats plied its waters were not luxury crafts, but packets and freight boats carrying supplies, livestock, export items, and pioneer settlers. The St. Croix Boom north of Stillwater also hindered the free flow of river traffic, as did the seemingly endless stream of logs floating down river. By summer's end the log run was finished, but the warmer, drier season lowered the water levels and exposed sandbars and narrower channels making excursions more difficult, but not impossible. In August 1859, an excursion steamer disembarked from Stillwater with thirty-five to forty citizens aboard. The Kate picked up more passengers at Marine and Osceola bringing its number to nearly a hundred. For the occasion, the boat was decorated with banners and evergreens. Although it left early in the day, the steamer did not reach the Dalles until the following morning due to "unavoidable detentions on account of the low stage of the water and heavy freight," and was hung up on bars. Apparently the passengers were not very put out by the long trip as the delay was "amply atoned for, in the privilege of passing through the "Dell' just as the sun was peeping over the mountains and dispelling the most beautiful mist and spray from that most beautiful and romantic spot." [19]

Despite the problems for travel on the St. Croix, the towns along the water still enthusiastically planned for and promoted their attractions, hoping to cash in on tourists venturing into the Old Northwest. In 1857, the four-story Sawyer House was built in Stillwater. It was considered the largest and finest hotel in the Minnesota Territory. Its "spacious rooms for social events made it one of the outstanding hostelries in the development of Minnesota." [20] Summer cottages were planned for the shores of Lake St. Croix. "The day is not far distant," claimed The Messenger, "when nice cottages. . .will reflect their white and dancing shadows from the bosom of Lake St. Croix." In June 1857, the St. Paul Advertiser gave Marine a boost claiming, "to the invalid, the pleasure seeker, as well as the sportsman, no place affords more ample inducements for sojourn and recreation." [21] In 1859, Stillwater welcomed regional visitors to its Fourth of July festivities. The steamer Itasca brought visitors from St. Paul and other stops along the Mississippi. The passengers enjoyed the annual parade, a German Singing Society, and tumblers from the Turner Society. After a cold supper in the armory, the visitors enjoyed a ball at the Sawyer House until the whistle from the boat summoned them for their late night journey home. [22]

Slavery and the Civil War put a damper on tourism in the late 1850s and early 1860s. While outright abolitionism was not much of a force in Wisconsin or Minnesota, "Free Soil, Free Labor, and Free Men" was. In the summer of 1860, a Mississippi slave owner vacationing at the popular Winslow House in St. Anthony brought along a slave woman named Eliza Winston. Winston had apparently been promised her freedom, and once on free soil she gained the support of an abolitionist and petitioned the Minnesota court for her release from bondage. The court sided with her and granted her request with no challenge from her master. Anti-abolitionist sentiment, however, had been aroused whereby a mob proposed to send Winston back to her master and tar-and-feather the abolitionist who aided her. The Undergrounded Railroad whisked her to Canada and the matter was legally ended. Hotel owners, however, feared the loss of southern tourists' patronage if they risked losing their slaves if they brought them along. The Stillwater Democrat warned that the "'intermeddling propensities of Abolition fanatics' would keep nearly a hundred of wealthy Southerners and the Negro servants from spending the summer along the shores of Lake St. Croix." But by the next spring the war had started and southern visitors stopped coming. [23]

While the Civil War brought a halt to the tourist trade, the local population found the river a delightful break from their daily toils. For many pioneers, a steamboat trip along the St. Croix was their first opportunity to view the panorama of the valley. "This was our first visit to the Upper St. Croix," wrote a member of an excursion party in 1859, "and we must admit that all our pre-conceived ideas of the beauty and grandeur of the Valley, fell far below the reality. To those fond of the wild and beautiful in Nature, we know of no place, East or West, where such a taste can be more fully gratified than in the vicinity of Taylor's Falls." [24] In August 1856, the editor of the Prescott Transcript rounded up a party to take a steamboat excursion trip up to Taylors Falls. "The weather was delightful," he reported, "the boat [was] provided by Capt. Martin and his obliging assistants with every possible accommodation, and all were in fine spirits. . .The scenery along the lake and river was observed with a pleasant interest by the party, to the most of whom it was new." The group was also intrigued "by the antics of some forty or fifty thousand big sturgeon that gave us a grand fancy dance around the boat as we passed along. . .They present one of the most interesting piscatory sights imaginable." [25] The abundance of game along the river not only provided sustenance for the first pioneers, but also supplied the sportsman with a wide variety of birds, animals, and fish. From its earliest days of settlement sportsmen were also attracted to the St. Croix Valley. In his 1849 book, Sketches of Minnesota, Seymour wrote to his nationwide audience that the lower St. Croix Valley was "a fine country for sportsmen. . .Deer are killed here in great numbers. . .The bear and the large gray wolf are often seen. Wild geese and ducks resort here in great numbers...The best trout fishing in the northwest is said to be on the Rush River. They are caught in immense quantities, not only with hooks, but also with scoop-nets." Seymour also noted that the St. Croix had groves of trees "alive with pigeons, which were constantly rising from the ground in large flocks." The birds he referred to are the now extinct passenger pigeons that once crowded midwestern skies in the nineteenth century. [26] "The country surrounding our city is filled with game," boasted the St. Croix Union in 1854. "Not infrequently do we hear a sportsman relate the experience of deer shooting. . .or what sport they had in ‘bagging' a drove of prairie chickens. Deer are so plentiful. . .Our hunters have become so well acquainted with the habits of this animal and so adept in the use of the rifle that it is a matter of no common occurrence to find their tables well supplied with venison. . .We have a great many streams filled with [trout], and it is fine sport for those who are disposed to engage in it." [27]

One unusual method to hunt deer was created by a Dutch hunter named Otto Neitge. In 1853, Neitge bought land in what is now Deer Park. Within five years he built a trap to catch deer with an eleven-foot palisade of posts. Deer could jump in but they could not get back out. Once a herd of one hundred became trapped inside the park, Neitge shot and slaughtered the annual increase, which he then sold in St. Paul and to Fort Snelling. Neitge also tried to do the same with bears, but they proved too troublesome. In 1874, the North Wisconsin railroad passed through Deer Park, and many people discovered Neitge's deer hunting secret. He developed a reputation as "a low, cowardly" sportsman who "shot, from between the poles of the stockade, many of the captive deer." This prompted Neitge to abandon this form of hunting, but his park lives on as a village name. [28]

In the 1850s, between Marine and Taylors Falls was an area valley residents called in the 1850s the "bear hunting ground." The innkeeper at the Marine Mills Hotel loved to serve this local delicacy to his visitors. From time to time a "General Bear Hunt" was organized out of Prescott for a two-day excursion for "all who desire to share in the sport." An amateur poet from Hudson enticed hunters with the following:

Come on then, ye sportsmen with high boots, rifle and blanket, and I will shortly conduct you to the forests where my forefathers, as they chased the swift elk and the huge black bear, would proudly exclaim,
No pent-up willow huts contain our powers,
But the unbounded wilderness is ours. [29]

Since winters were so cold and long, many hearty souls took to winter sports. In the winter of 1863, the Stillwater Messenger announced, "Members of the Skating Club and all others are invited to call and examine our stock of skates, skating caps, hoods, nubias, sontags, balmoral skirts, balmoral shoes, gloves, mitts, &c." [30] A year later the paper reported, "The warm days and cool nights we have had lately have made the skating good upon the lake, and large crowds are enjoying the sport during this pleasant weather." [31] Springtime brought out the baseball enthusiasts of the St. Croix Baseball Club. [32]

When the war was over, the St. Croix Valley returned to the national scene. Famed journalist Horace Greeley visited the St. Croix Valley in 1865. He was not only impressed by its wheat production, but also by its healthy climate, and recommended the area for those plagued by ague and chronic coughs. The Stillwater Messenger quickly echoed these sentiments. The paper even joined in the exaggerations that often accompanied the literature written about the health benefits of the area. "Pine emits an odor peculiarly healing and highly beneficial for invalids, hence it is no uncommon thing for small parties to take up their quarters in the wilderness, and spend the winter there with numerous gangs of lumbermen." [33] Consumption suffers, in particular could find relief in the pineries of the upper St. Croix. A poem was even written about the health-giving pine trees:

For health comes sparkling in the stream
From Namekagon stealing;
There's iron in our northern winds,
Our pines are trees of healing. [34]

Health seekers from the South and East were also enticed back to the region after the war by handbooks, such as Tourists' and Invalids' Complete Guide and Epitome of Travel. [35] By the end of the 1870s southerners began to come to the St. Croix again in noticeable numbers. "Capt. Jack Reaney came up on the steamer Knapp Tuesday, and has been rusticating in the upper St. Croix Valley for a few days," wrote the Burnett County Sentinel. He informs us that the tourists from the south are coming up in large numbers, and many of them find their way to the St. Croix river." [36]

By the 1860s, a new medium was developed that was able to portray the unique scenery of the St. Croix to a wider audience -- the stereograph. Between the 1860s and 1880s making and selling stereographs of the St. Croix became a profitable business. The most noted photographers of the St. Croix in this period were William Illingworth, Charles A. Zimmerman, William Jacoby, and Benjamin Upton, and Joel E. Whitney. Whitney was the first major commercial photographer in Minnesota. While he began his business taking daguerreotypes of people, in the 1850s he brought his camera along on a twenty-five mile hike around St. Paul and St. Anthony taking eighty landscape pictures. By the 1860s, the demand for landscape photographs became the "bread and butter" of commercial photographers, and the St. Croix Valley was included in the search for these picturesque and sublime pictures. [37]

In 1875, John P. Doremus of Patterson, New Jersey began photographing the river as part of a "floating gallery" on a boat that was "a little palace itself." "He started out from St. Anthony over a year ago," related the Lumberman, "with the intention of taking views along the Mississippi and its tributaries down to New Orleans." The paper expressed appreciation for his carefully considered photos. "He takes it leisurely and does his work in fine shape, the views he has of the St. Croix being the best we have ever seen." The charms of the St. Croix were now visually documented to attract more tourists looking to escape the oppressive heat, humidity, and illness of the lower Mississippi. [38] The St. Croix Valley's fame spread further when in 1885 Eastman's roll film was developed. In 1900, Kodak's Brownie camera made photography easier and cheaper for visitors to the St. Croix to share their experiences with friends back home. [39]

Figure 30. Steamboats provided tourists with easy access to the Upper Mississippi Valley and allowed tourism to begin as early as the 1830s and 1840s.