Saint Croix National Scenic Riverway Time and the River: A History of the Saint Croix A Historic Resource Study of the Saint Croix National Scenic Riverway

The Upper Middle West of the United States has been blessed with an amazing waterway system. From the Great Lakes to the mighty Mississippi River and all its tributaries as well as numerous fresh water lakes and streams, there were ample water resources to whet the appetites of farmers and manufacturers. "In an earlier, more confident time," wrote economists Brian Page and Richard Walker, "the Midwest was commonly held up as an example to the modern world of the true path to capitalist growth: a potent mix of agricultural extension agent, railroads, and heavy industry." Agricultural settlement here went hand in hand with industrial development. While some settlers came with no greater expectation than to acquire a piece of land to farm for their families, the St. Croix Valley had already been connected to a national and even international market through the fur trade and logging industry. This connection to the larger world, in many ways, acted as the lure for potential pioneer settlers. Lumbering and business interests needed the products farmers produced. As the timber frontier pushed further up river lumber companies left vacant, unproductive, and often tax delinquent lands that needed to be disposed of. Businesses in the old lumber towns needed new customers to replace the retreating world of the lumberjack. Farmers eagerly filled this void.

Throughout the nineteenth century and into the twentieth, northern manufacturing centers exploited the region's raw materials and also created a demand for its agricultural products. The industrial revolution, in turn, made farming the great expanse of land in the Midwest and the St. Croix Valley more efficient and profitable. Farmers, businessmen, and financiers worked in mutual support to transform the St. Croix River Valley from a remote frontier into an accessible, settled land. The St. Croix Valley was an integral part of the Midwestern and national economy from its earliest days of settlement. [1]

Figure 26. The disputed site of St. Croix Falls in 1848 from an oil painting by Henry Lewis. The dispute between William Hungerford and Caleb Cushing retarded the development of the site—which was probably a good thing.

Dividing the Valley

More than logging or the fur trade, the extension of agricultural settlement along the St. Croix necessitated a complete restructuring of the valley's natural landscape. When the Chippewa and Dakota Indians signed the Treaties of 1837, the valley was opened to a new system of land exploitation. The blueprint followed by the agriculturalists who came to the St. Croix flowed from the fertile brain of Thomas Jefferson. Although he never saw the landscape of the Upper Mississippi, Jefferson had played a hand in the creation of the Land Ordinance of 1785 and the Northwest Ordinance of 1787. The Northwest Ordinance provided the principles and guidelines for the establishment of democracy and government in the territories that were north of the Ohio River and extended west of Pennsylvania to the Mississippi River. It was an extraordinary piece of legislation with far-reaching consequences for the future development of this country. New states formed out of this territory were to be admitted as equals to the original thirteen and slavery was banned. This ensured a free labor system in the North and that all the rights of U.S. citizens in eastern states would be enjoyed in the West. This was no trivial consideration for westward migration.

While the Northwest Ordinance provided the means for the expansion of the Union, it was the Land Ordinance of 1785 that laid the basis for federal land sales and patterns of distribution. Because it claimed so much uncharted and unsettled territory, the federal government had to establish an orderly method to transfer remote lands to private ownership. The Ordinance stipulated that all government lands be surveyed and divided into townships of thirty-six square miles along meridian lines. Each township was to be cut into thirty-six sections of one square mile each. This land then could be divided into half-sections of 320 acres catering to the interest of speculators and quarter sections beginning at 160 acres and sub-divided down to 40 acre plots for the average homesteader. Townships and sections that bordered on major rivers or lakes simply had a square shape with a fractured edge rather than extending the boundary across the waterway.

The Land Ordinance profoundly shaped the physical landscape of America. French lands in North America traditionally were claimed and laid out with respect to drainage basins. The grid system established by the Ordinance and the Anglo-American tradition of using rivers as boundaries had enormous consequences for the St. Croix Valley. Dozens of townships used the river as their boundary. Their respective governments began the division of the river community long before statehood created the biggest divide. The Land Ordinance also altered cultural patterns of settlers in the valley. In many European farming communities, homes of agricultural workers were clustered in villages, and peasants hiked out to tend the fields. The French also had brought to North America, as can be seen in Prairie Du Chien the practice of using rectangular-shaped long lots with the narrow ends bordering a road or river respecting the natural shape of the land. Houses built along these thoroughfares formed small hamlets with all settlers having access to the road or river. However, the American rural landscape, marked out in square miles indifferent to the natural contours or quality of the land, placed settlers onto single farmsteads with solitary homes. Old Indian trails or paths that followed the natural lay of the land were abruptly severed by fenced-in private property. Immigrants had to adapt to the more individualistic and self-reliant American land system as well as the responsibilities of self-government. [2]

Federal surveying teams began penetrating into the Wisconsin frontier in the late1830s. They first began in the populous mining region of southwestern Wisconsin. From there land offices opened in the southeastern portion of the state and moved north and west. This in part reflected the Ordinance's logic to move east to west and south to north in order to the maintain regularity of the thirty-six-square mile township. It also reflected the general pattern of population migration westward. As this land was made available the Wisconsin frontier gave way to farms with amazing speed. By 1845 federal land sale offices sold nearly three million acres in the territory. However, the natural transportation afforded by the Mississippi River and other water systems such as the Wisconsin and the St. Croix Rivers into the northwestern portion of the Wisconsin territory brought lumber barons and lumberjacks, provisioners, and farmers who supplied the lumber camps into the north woods ahead of the federal surveying teams. [3]

The St. Croix Valley was among the most remote regions of the Old Northwest Territory. Although mostly Indian Territory, legal jurisdiction for matters concerning soldiers, fur traders and the like fell under territorial governments' authority. Early on the St. Croix Valley came under the jurisdiction of the Indiana and then the Illinois territory. And between1819 to 1836, legal jurisdiction over the valley was across Lake Michigan in Crawford County, Michigan when it then became Crawford County of the Wisconsin Territory. However, only Indians, fur traders, and soldiers from Fort Snelling knew anything about the land's beauty and abundance. Outsiders considered this area too far north and the soil too poor for successful cultivation of marketable crops. Only loggers who hoped to exploit its vast timber resources ventured here and there with little thought of permanent settlement. Once in the St. Croix Valley logging entrepreneurs discovered to their surprise its relatively healthful climate free from the malarial fevers of the lower Mississippi and its rich black loamy soil, not to mention its physical charms. These loggers and their families joined former traders and soldiers and formed the first permanent settlements along the St. Croix River. [4]

It was not until 1848 that the first federal land office opened along the St. Croix in St. Croix Falls -- a good ten years after Chippewa and Dakota lands were ceded. By then many squatters had laid claim to some of the land in the valley. Squatters often had a disreputable reputation back East as unscrupulous individuals who settled on land whose title was in dispute with the aim of wresting control of it. However, in the Old Northwest Territory they were simply settlers who arrived before the land surveyors and began farming virgin land. By making their own marks on trees and planting a small plot of land these men and their families hoped to begin a new life. While Congress raged indignantly over the actions of these usurpers of federal lands, western politicians who were more familiar with frontier conditions defended the rights and actions of their constituents. Some accommodation had to be made between the Land Ordinance system and the realities of the frontier. In 1841, therefore, Congress passed the Pre-Emption Act. It granted squatters the first opportunity to purchase lands they had already settled for the minimum amount of $1.25 an acre. This Act was later replace by the 1862 Homestead Act that granted a free quarter section to any settler who farmed it for five years. [5]

The land under the jurisdiction of Crawford County, Wisconsin included the entire western portion of the Wisconsin Territory east of the Mississippi River and north to Canada. Its county seat was in Prairie Du Chien, the old French fur-trading town. Anyone living east of the Mississippi in the Wisconsin Territory was required to travel to the town for any legal transactions. In the few years between 1838 when land was opened for settlement and 1840 when the U.S. Census was taken, 351 non-Indian people had settled in the "Lake St. Croix District" which ran from St. Croix Falls to the Chippewa Mission at Pokegama. [6]

The early history of the St. Croix Valley was inexorably tied to the founding of the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul. One of the more colorful and influential characters to shape this history was Joseph R. Brown, the former soldier, fur trader, lumberman, farmer, storekeeper, and government official. In pursuit of his own interests, Brown played a key role in establishing St. Croix County. Unlike some of the early lumbermen, Brown's main interest in land claims along the rivers was in their potential to serve as ferry landings and town sites rather than their waterpower or timber resources. He knew once the Upper Mississippi River Valley was opened for settlement prospective homesteaders would flock to the area and they would need places to disembark, temporary accommodations, provisions, and access to interior lands. One available site was at present day Taylors Falls, but Brown felt it had no adequate landings for steamboats and the area was too hilly to build a large and profitable town. Instead, Brown banked on a claim near Fort Snelling. It seemed like a perfect location to build a northern Davenport, Galena, Dubuque, Peoria, or even a Chicago. It was at the northern reaches of navigation on the Upper Mississippi since narrow channels and sandbars limited access to the Falls of St. Anthony. It was also the only site available for settlement in that vicinity since Fort Snelling was on the northeastern shore of the Minnesota River at its mouth and the western shore of the Mississippi. The southern shore of the rivers was still in Indian hands. Since settlement was also heading up the St.Croix River, Brown hedged his bets by making three claims. One was at the mouth of the river near present day Prescott, another was at the head of Lake St. Croix where he had a warehouse to supply his upper river trading posts, and the third was on the lake at St. Mary's Point by the small voyageur and half breed settlement. [7]

In 1839, Brown made his first foray into politics when he sent a petition to the Wisconsin Territorial legislature for a permit to run a ferry from his claim across the Mississippi to the Fort Snelling reserve. The legislature's select committee proposed it as a bill, but for unknown reasons opposition to the bill arose and resulted in its indefinite postponement. Brown learned that the only way to promote his interests would be to immerse himself in the politics of the area. Thus, he began a venture into government work by winning a position as Justice of the Peace. Previous to his appointment all legal transaction in the region required a trip to Prairie Du Chien. Brown helped make legal matters more convenient for settlers in the St. Croix Valley as well as to make himself a key figure.

Brown also set up a whiskey depot on his claim across from Fort Snelling that quickly became a popular recreation site for lonesome soldiers short on entertainment. After a drunken spree that put nearly two-thirds of the men in the guardhouse, army commanders were determined to put an end to Brown's house of libation. It seems, however, that Brown's whiskey shop was only a pretext for claiming the best ferry landing between the Fort and the Falls at St. Anthony. St. Anthony Falls was obviously a choice spot for waterpower. Several officers from Fort Snelling, including the commanding officer, dabbled on the side in land speculation there when not occupied with military matters. If the Falls area was to flourish, these would-be entrepreneurs needed to eliminate competing commercial and settlement sites such as Brown's. They also laid claim to a prime landing spot at the mouth of the St. Croix River at present day Prescott. For military reasons the Fort commanders decided to extend its boundaries to oust the collection of old fur traders, refugees from the Red River colony in Winnipeg, and various French Canadian vagabonds. Besides their penchant for liquor at Brown's whiskey shop, Major Joseph Plympton felt they were using up more than their fair share of fuel wood near the Fort and their horses and cattle overgrazed public lands. He ordered Lieutenant James L. Thompson to mark out new boundaries for the fort that included what is now the Twin Cities. They reached from St. Anthony Falls east to Lake Calhoun to a line south of the Minnesota and Mississippi River and east nearly to St. Paul's Seven Corners. About 150 squatters not connected to the military installation were told to leave the area. In October 1839, in a show of support for Fort Snelling's actions, the Secretary of War sent an order to the U.S. Marshal for the Wisconsin Territory to remove the settlers immediately and use force if necessary. The order, however, was misdelivered and delayed for months. [8]

In the meantime, outraged settlers formed a citizens' group and selected Brown to present a petition against the military reserve extension to the Wisconsin Territorial Legislature in Madison. They hoped the civil government would stop the extension of the military holdings into land for civilian settlement. In November 1839, Brown accompanied Ira Brunson, the Representative for Crawford County as well as its deputy marshal, to Madison where Brunson submitted to the territorial government the citizens' petition against the military reserve's extension of its boundaries to the east side of the Mississippi. By December the Territorial government passed a resolution against the military reserve extension to the east bank of the Mississippi and notified the Secretary of War that the military was preempting land that was under the civilian control of the Wisconsin Territory without its consent. By March 1840 the dispute reached Congress. The War Department's influence in Washington led to the petition's death in committee. Fort Snelling lost no time and by May forced squatters from the newly extended military reserve. [9]

Fort Snelling's land grab had important consequences for settlement in the Upper Mississippi River Valley. Many of the evicted squatters moved up river to St. Anthony Falls to join a small group of settlers already there. They would make this site the region's center of immigration and business rather than the land occupied by the Fort at the confluence of the Mississippi and the St. Croix Rivers. St. Paul and Minneapolis, which emerged out of this settlement, would create a major metropolitan area further removed up river from the mouth of the St. Croix River. [10]

Still determined to advance his interests Brown pressed other business on the Wisconsin Territorial Legislature in the winter of 1839-40. Out of his "Black Betty," a type of satchel common on the frontier, he produced another citizens' petition requesting that a new county be formed out of northwestern Crawford County with a county seat at Chanwakan, which was south of the military reserve on the Mississippi not far from Prescott and the St. Croix River. The Wisconsin Territorial Legislature was aware of the growth of immigration to its northwest region and was ready to entertain the idea of a new county up there. However, loggers from the Marine and St. Croix lumbering companies had also recognized the need for more accessible local government along the St. Croix River and had submitted their petition to the legislature to create St. Croix County with the county seat at Prescott. Brown quickly recognized the greater viability of a proposed county centered along the St. Croix River rather than the Mississippi, especially when the military reserve issue had not yet been entirely settled. However, he was determined to prevent Prescott from becoming the seat of government since he knew that a syndicate of Fort Snelling officers controlled it as well. Instead of submitting his own petition, Brown focused on finding a compromise with the lumbering interests along the St. Croix. [11]

The lumbermen's goal was to have all the timberland on the St. Croix and Chippewa Rivers fall within the new county's boundaries. Brown, on the other hand, was more interested establishing the location of future ferry landings, town sites, and farmsteads for arriving immigrants. By January 1840, a compromise bill passed the legislature establishing St. Croix County. It excluded the Chippewa River drainage basin because inhabitants there still identified with Prairie Du Chien. St. Croix County's southern boundary, then, was fixed at the Porcupine River -- which is now Rush River -- on Lake Pepin. From its first fork its boundary went in a straight northeasterly direction to the Hay Fork of the Red Cedar River and then directly north along the Bois Brule River to Lake Superior, and westward along the lakeshore to the Canadian border. Its western boundary was the Mississippi River. Since the location of the county seat was disputed, the Wisconsin legislature wisely allowed the inhabitants to vote on where to place it. Since the land in the St. Croix Valley was not yet surveyed, county commissioners had to have the consent of the occupant of any land it wished to claim and that the occupant had to pay at least eight hundred dollars to the county treasury. If the occupant agreed to these terms, his claim as a squatter to 160 acres was secured as well as the value of his land increased. The fledgling county then would have cash to begin governmental responsibilities. Since the population base was so small, two representatives and one councilman were to be elected at large from St. Croix and Crawford Counties. [12]

On August 3, 1840 the first county elections were held to determine the county seat. Brown, in a concession to the upriver loggers, put forth as a potential government center his unsurveyed claim on the north end of Lake St. Croix where he had built a warehouse, or storage shed. While not an ideal location for a great commercial city, it had a steamboat landing and waterpower. "Joe Brown's Claim," as it was called, received forty-five votes to Prescott's thirteen. Brown had finally outmaneuvered his Fort Snelling rivals. He also managed to be elected treasurer, surveyor, and register of deeds. Brown paid the eight hundred dollars to the county thus securing his claim as well as future profits. However, the consequences of the Brown–Fort Snelling rivalry for the St. Croix River Valley was to disperse commercial and government activities along the river thus preventing the more logical development of a major urban center at the junction of the St. Croix and Mississippi Rivers near Prescott and Point Douglas. [13]

Territorial elections were held on September 28. Through deft political maneuvering Brown also managed to get himself elected as territorial representative by putting his name on the ballot in the St. Croix district as well as in Prairie Du Chien, thereby ensuring a plurality of votes in the bi-county election. Ever vigilant in his quest to attract farmers to the valley, Brown proposed a bill by December in the territorial legislature to build three roads in the new county. The routes were to extend from Marine Mills down along the river passing by Dacotah -- the new name for "Joe Brown's Claim" -- and veering westward through Prospect Grove (now Cottage Grove) to Grey Cloud Island on the Mississippi; one from Marine Mills up to St. Croix Falls; and another from Prescott's ferry to Grey Cloud Island. The bill was approved by February 1841.

A year later Brown proposed sending Congress a memorial for an appropriation for a survey of a new military road from Fort Howard on Green Bay to Fort Snelling via Plover Portage on the Wisconsin River and Dacotah on the St. Croix. This would cut the travel distance from five hundred to two hundred miles by avoiding the water route along the Fox and Wisconsin Rivers. Brown also put forth a resolution to have the public lands north of the Wisconsin River surveyed. Both measures passed without a hitch. Brown thereby enhanced the prospect of settlement for the north territory as well as increased the value of "Joe Brown's claim." [14]

The county seat at Dacotah began inauspiciously. The initial settlers were all Brown's relatives. While many people passed through the settlement on their way to the pineries, few chose Dacotah as a permanent settlement. With no finished lumber available the first "court house" was made from tamarack logs with mud plastered in the chinks to keep the wind and cold at bay. While the county commissioners met here, David Irwin, a judge from the Green Bay district court, was appalled on his first visit in June 1840 by its primitive conditions and lack of formalized proceedings. He was quoted as saying that he would never again go to that "God-forsaken spot." Even when he was accused of neglecting his duties, Irwin refused to go back to Dacotah. The Wisconsin Territorial Legislature was then forced to amend the St. Croix County bill and give Crawford County legal jurisdiction there. Commissioners were allowed for convenience sake to set up their offices at Red Stone Prairie on the Mississippi River, now Newport, Minnesota. Joseph Brown even abandoned Dacotah in 1843 for Grey Cloud on the Mississippi. By 1846 Dacotah was all but a ghost town. [15]

However, the beauty and resources of the St. Croix did not depend upon the likes of Joe Brown to attract settlers and prosper. By the 1840s the St. Croix River Valley as well as the Upper Mississippi River Valley had emerged from a mysterious country of wilderness and Indians to a well-known area mapped out and described by explorers. Eastern developers and potential settlers had already begun migrating here. [16] The first towns in the Old St. Croix County were, of course, lumber centers with suitable mill sites, such as Stillwater, Marine, St. Croix Falls, Osceola, Hudson, Arcola, and St. Anthony Falls. According to an 1842 census twenty-seven men and two women lived in Marine Mills. Seventy-one men and five women had taken up residence at St. Croix Falls. Other settlements appeared near fords in the St. Croix that were most conducive to shipping, such as Afton; or places that had been Indian trading centers, such as the Dakota mission which became the nucleus for Newport. The old trading post Crow Wing gained importance when the Winnebago/Chippewa agency was located across the Mississippi River from it. St. Paul had begun to take the lead as a commercial settlement thanks to the failure of the Fort Snelling land syndicate. [17]

These rudimentary settlements attracted tradesmen and entrepreneurs eager to make their mark or fortune on the frontier. The range of economic activities of early settlers, however, was limited to serving a local economy with traders often resorting to barter. Logs rather than agricultural products monopolized river transportation. The first farmers were initially loggers or mill workers who saved enough of their wages to claim land for a homestead. Wives and children then joined their men folk in the north woods. Raising livestock was the quickest entrée into farming since there was a ready local market among timber men for meat and dairy products. Once a flourmill was built in Afton, farmers turned to grain to supplement lumberjack diets with pancakes and biscuits. Seasoned wood from cleared land could also fetch a profit from the steamboats that plied the St. Croix. However, agricultural expansion was hindered by the lack of roads and the collapse of the county government. [18]

By 1841, St. Croix county business was back in Prairie du Chien. The county had no taxing system and owed Joe Brown back rent on the unfinished county "building" he had erected. By 1843 county commissioners stopped meeting entirely. County Clerk William Holcombe, however, sought to resurrect the moribund county government. In 1843, he petitioned the Wisconsin legislature for a variance to permit the clerk to act as sheriff so legal elections could be held under his supervision. The office of Judge Probate was also revived. Yet, even with these changes most legal matters still had to be presented in Prairie du Chien. In 1845, Holcombe and other St. Croix citizens asked the legislature to relocate their county seat. They argued that since St. Croix County now had more people than Crawford County, it should not be subordinated to a government with a smaller population. The legislature agreed and granted St. Croix citizens the right to vote on a new county seat. The people of St. Croix County, however, never held an election. [19]

Apparently, the three former commissioners, Joseph Furber, William R. Brown, and Philip Aldrich, feared that St. Paul would dominate the selection process while their interests lay along the St. Croix River. However, the Wisconsin legislature, with its sights on statehood, was frustrated by the lack of governmental organization in the county. In 1846, it seized the initiative and selected Stillwater, the most important logging center on the Upper Mississippi, as the seat of county government. In that year Stillwater rivaled St. Paul with approximately the same number of permanent families, ten and twelve respectively, and three to five stores. It was not until the following year, 1847, when Franklin Steele built a dam and sawmill at St. Anthony Falls, that the embryo for St. Paul's twin city of Minneapolis was conceived putting these settlements on the trajectory for metropolitan dominance in the North Country. The territorial legislature also wasted no time in building the first road from Stillwater to St. Paul that year. [20]

With its northwestern county back on track, the Wisconsin legislature began its quest for statehood and applied to Congress in 1846. Since the Erie Canal had opened in 1825 connecting Lake Erie to Albany, New York and the Hudson River down to the Port of New York on the Atlantic Ocean, the Great Lakes and Mississippi Valley region became accessible to east coast entrepreneurs and pioneers. Settlers by the tens of thousands began migrating here with Wisconsin being a major beneficiary. Immigration into the territory was so swift that by 1845 Wisconsin counted 155,000 residents in a mid-decade census exceeding requirements for statehood. Wisconsinites proceeded to elect delegates for their December convention. Statehood seemed quickly assured. [21]

Wisconsin's northwestern boundary, however, became a hotly disputed issue that had profound consequences for the St. Croix Valley and its residents. The original border for the Wisconsin Territory designated by the Northwest Ordinance extended to the Mississippi River. Between the St. Croix River and the Mississippi was the growing city of St. Paul and approximately one-third of what is now the state of Minnesota. The Wisconsin territorial legislature intended to keep possession of its rich timberlands, prairies, rivers, and lakes. The settlers on the St. Croix, however, had other ideas. They saw their interests and identity as different from the farmers and miners in the south and eastern portions of the territory. St. Croix men were lumberjacks who came from Maine or other New England forested states. They by-passed most of Wisconsin and its typical path of settlement by heading directly up the Mississippi from Illinois to the St. Croix River Valley. Their acquaintances were old fur traders or soldiers who had transformed themselves into town-site speculators and lumber entrepreneurs. When St. Croix County was created, it encompassed the entire St. Croix Valley and encouraged its residents to think of the watershed much like the old French traders before them. The St. Croix's geographic remoteness and economic uniqueness created a culture apart from other settlers in the Wisconsin Territory. Settlers here realized that this far northern country had no chance to secure any major public institutions, such as a capitol city, a major university, or a penitentiary — Madison had a lock on these. St. Croix residents felt their best interests politically and economically would best be served by separating themselves from Wisconsin and forming a new territory and proposed a boundary near the Chippewa River. [22]

When the issue of Wisconsin statehood was brought before Congress, expansionists such as Senator Stephen Douglas of Illinois proposed a third view of where the territory's western boundary should be placed. They argued that a state with its boundary to the Mississippi would be too large to manage. In addition, by creating another state out of the Old Northwest Territory the North would gain an advantage in the growing sectional crisis with the South over expansion and slavery. They proposed setting Wisconsin's western boundary at the St. Croix River. When the enabling legislation passed Congress, the politically powerful expansionists won. Wisconsin's boundary was designated at the St. Croix River. [23]

Statehood enabling acts, however, were generally considered recommendations, not binding acts. Wisconsin's constitutional convention had the right to consider Congress's actions regarding their boundary proposal. Many Wisconsinites were appalled at the prospect that they would lose so much territory in the northwest. Nor were all St. Croix County residents happy that their river valley community might be divided; yet they were encouraged by Congress's willingness to create a new territory. Therefore, much was at stake on what would happen at the state constitutional convention. The citizens of St. Croix County faced the daunting task of convincing both Congress and most of Wisconsin that the boundary should run further south than either of them wanted. They had to choose their delegate to the convention carefully. That they did by electing William Holcombe, one of the original founders of St. Croix Falls Lumbering Company who also had interests in steam boating and land speculation. [24]

Holcombe skillfully made the case that Congressional expansionists were right that a state with its boundary to the Mississippi was too large, and that another state would work to the North's advantage in national politics. He also argued that Madison, nearly three hundred miles away, was too far and remote a location of government. Echoing the democratic philosophy of Thomas Jefferson, Holcombe added that St. Croix County residents were self-reliant frontiersmen who needed and wanted a government that was close by and accessible in order to exercise their democratic rights effectively. The St. Croix River Valley with a boundary from present-day Winona to the western edge of Michigan's Upper Peninsula, he proposed, would form the nucleus of a new territory made up of people with common interests in lumbering and business. Stillwater, "the hotbed of St. Croix separatism," planned to be the capitol. A divided valley, he argued would "alienate the interests of society, perplex the trade and business of the river, and retard the growth of the settlement."

If Holcombe had made his case to Congress, he might have made some converts. By arguing before the Wisconsin constitutional convention that the state should give up more land than even Congress proposed as well as access to Lake Superior, his amendment was received coolly. However, Holcomb did win a compromise. The convention did agree that the valley should not be divided even at the cost of some territory for Wisconsin. It proposed a new boundary from Lake Superior south to the Mississippi, which ran approximately fifteen miles east of the St. Croix. Holcombe and his supporters seemed to have victory close at hand. If Wisconsin voters accepted the proposed constitution, the St. Croix Valley would not be part of the state. The only opposition in the state to the loss of territory came from Crawford County. Residents in Prairie du Chien feared they would be left on the fringe of Wisconsin and politically marginalized in a state dominated by eastern interests. The proposed constitution, however, foundered on other issues. There were provisions in it to ban bank chartering which reflected the typical western settlers' suspicions of outside moneyed interests controlling their destiny. The convention also had written a constitution that was fairly liberal for the time. Married women were to enjoy property rights, and Negroes were to be granted suffrage. Conservative Badgers, even some in St. Croix County, roundly rejected the document in an April 1847 election. [25]

Wisconsin's second constitutional convention in the spring of 1847 was smaller and more politically balanced and representative of the sentiments of the territory than the first had been. In the interim, political influence along the St. Croix shifted to the "Bostonians" — a group of eastern capitalists that included Caleb Cushing, Rufus Choate, and Robert Rantoul, Jr.. In 1845, these men formed the St. Croix and Lake Superior Mining Company. They planned to mine copper on the upper St. Croix and to develop timber resources and waterpower at St. Croix Falls as well as at the Falls of St. Anthony. This syndicate felt their economic interests were not compatible with the farmers, merchants, and lead miners in the southern half of the state. The inclusion of a ban on bank chartering in the first constitution convinced them that pioneers were in general suspicious of eastern investors. Controlling their own territory would give them the tax breaks they felt were needed to promote their economic goals. They had to get a boundary favorable to their interests. Some confidently predicted Cushing would be the first territorial governor with Stillwater the new capitol. The Bostonians and others in St. Croix County hoped the new body's more pragmatic members might be influenced to turn over more land to the valley than the compromise worked out in the previous convention. They selected a new delegate, George W. Brownell, to represent them. Brownell was a geologist and mineralogist who came to the St. Croix Valley in 1846 where he discovered lead and earned a living as a newspaper editor. He was also an agent of Cushing's. The Bostonians felt they found a representative who could advance their interests in a new constitutional convention.

The new delegate made a dramatic entrance into Madison by arriving on snowshoes after a three-week trek to demonstrate the remoteness of the St. Croix River Valley from Madison. Brownell reintroduced Holcombe's original proposal for the border and made the same Jeffersonian claims of the need for democracy to be close to the people. These Wisconsin convention delegates, however, were savvier than their predecessors. Perhaps because of the close ties between Brownell and Cushing, they did not buy the argument advanced that the St. Croix Valley was "worthless" to Wisconsin. They realized that the St. Croix Valley had singular natural resources in timber and waterpower. By simply accepting the boundary of the enabling act -- the St. Croix River -- they could claim at least some of these resources and shore up its statehood quest by assenting to Congress' original act. Other bolder delegates wanted to claim as much of the Old Northwest Territory as possible. They set a boundary from the first rapids of the St. Louis River near Lake Superior to the mouth of the Rum River down to the Mississippi thereby seizing the entire St. Croix Valley as well as the St. Paul area. Their proposal swept the convention by a vote of fifty-three to three. [26]

As long as the valley was not divided many St. Croix residents were resigned to their inclusion in Wisconsin. Others on the west side of the St. Croix River, however, wanted no part of the new state and schemed to create a new territory. Individuals such as Morgan Martin, Wisconsin's territorial delegate to Congress, envisioned a Minnesota Territory and future state that included not only land stretching from Holcombe's original border to the Mississippi, but also land further west into the Louisiana Purchase Territory. The Dakota Indians, however, would have to be approached to sell their land. Martin's fur-trading associates stood to benefit from the opening of land not yet depleted of fur-bearing animals. They also thought the St. Paul area would attract more settlers if the Indians were pushed further west. This faction took their case directly to Congress.

By the spring of 1848 the St. Croix River Valley found itself at the center of a heated national debate that threatened to jeopardize Wisconsin's admittance into the Union. The Minnesota faction found a supporter for their scheme in Robert Smith of Illinois. Smith argued Brownell's position that the St. Croix Valley was too remote from Madison and that it would be economically unfeasible to divide settlers on the river under two governments. If left intact and outside Wisconsin, the St. Croix settlers could form the nucleus of another state. Expansionist in Congress did not miss the implications of this proposal for creating another northern state. Other Congressmen, however, did not think Minnesota a viable territory because of its small population. Congress also had more pressing issues in the aftermath of the Mexican War and the acquisition of new territory in the Southwest that re-ignited sectional issues of the expansion of slavery west of Texas to spend much time reflecting on the remote northern country and potential Indians problems. For the most part, Congress was anxious to remove the Wisconsin-Minnesota issue from the national stage and create another northern state, so it sought a simple solution. It voted to admit Wisconsin to the Union on May 29, 1848 with its northwestern border as specified in the enabling act — the St. Croix River. The valley was separated because of political expediency, the Anglo-American tradition of using rivers for borders, and perhaps self-interested politicians in the St. Croix area scheming for another state prematurely. [27]

While the rest of Wisconsin celebrated its new status in the Union, St. Croix River Valley residents lamented their separation from each other. The river that had initially united them, now divided them. They found themselves under different governments and legal jurisdictions that would forever complicate life along the St. Croix. The most immediate problem was that St. Croix County, Wisconsin did not have a county seat since Stillwater was across the river. St. Croix County on the Minnesota side had a county seat but no legal authority under it. Wisconsin's elevation to statehood marked the end of the Old Northwest Territory leaving the area between the St. Croix and the Mississippi a rump territory with its legal status in limbo. Wisconsin quickly rectified this situation by choosing a new county seat for its portion of St. Croix County at the mouth of the Willow River initially called Buena Vista. In 1852, it changed its name to Hudson. While Congress declared that Wisconsin territorial laws were in force across the river, residents there found themselves with no courts, no law officers, no legislature, or representation in Congress. They had to politically mobilize themselves once again. [28]

Since it had been the county seat, Stillwater's residents took the lead in convincing Congress to grant territorial status to Minnesota. Word went out to settlers of the region to meet in Stillwater for a convention on August 26, 1848. They were encouraged by the likes of Joe Brown, who still schemed to make his land claim on the St. Croix the center of settlement. Among their concerns was that in their current state of political limbo, Congress might not appropriate money for internal improvements. The convention resolved to petition Congress and President James K. Polk for a more clearly defined territorial status. They unanimously elected Henry Sibley of Mendota, Iowa Territory (who volunteered to travel to Washington at his own expense) to present their case. At first Congress was reluctant to seat Sibley but relented when they decided he was a delegate of the remnant Wisconsin Territory. The expansionist Senator Stephen Douglas helped him steer through Congress a bill to create a new territory. Douglas's assistance, however, tinged the Minnesota cause with a Democratic Party hue that southerners quickly turned into a sectional issue. Although independent frontiersmen and believers in popular sovereignty, Stillwater politicians were decidedly uninterested in the national implications of Minnesota statehood. But the spirit of Manifest Destiny was on their side and on March 3, 1849 the Minnesota Territory was formed even though its population was not sufficient. Its boundaries matched those of today's state. St. Croix County was renamed Washington County after the first president October 27, 1849. [29]

Despite Minnesota's arrival as a territory, residents on both sides of the St. Croix River regretted their separation for years to come. Wisconsinites, whose north woods identity remained in tact, longed to be part of the new territory. Minnesotans, in turn, pitied their poor Wisconsin cousins for being so close to them but captive of another state. [30] In his visit to the region in the late 1840s, travel writer E.S. Seymour noticed the depressing effect of using the St. Croix as a boundary between the two territories. "Another circumstance detrimental to the prosperity of this place, at least temporarily, is the location of the boundary line," he wrote. "Several of the citizens [of Wisconsin], preferring to unite their fortunes with the new Territory of Minnesota, have removed from St. Croix to some of the thriving towns now springing up in that flourishing territory. The only business now prosecuted at the Falls is that of the sawmills, and incidental business connected with it." [31]

If the conflict of ambitions that marked the end of the Wisconsin Territory resulted in a divided valley, the Northwest Ordinance and the Land Ordinance at least established a common method of creating political order and organizing economic exploitation in the St. Croix Valley. Land, of course, would be the major attraction for prospective settlers. Still, it came with the considerable added attraction and guarantees of the American political system — freedom, individual rights, and the pursuit of happiness — as well as the political mechanisms to make these possible. [32] By the mid-1840s the federal land office was inundated with pleas that the land along the St. Croix be surveyed. Squatters logged trees they had no legitimate claim to. Speculators petitioned Congress and President John Tyler to do something about the theft of timber along the river for fear that any legitimate business enterprise would never take root in the region. Therefore, the General Land Office authorized the opening of a land office in St. Croix Falls in 1848 (It was moved to Stillwater in 1849), and Willow River (Hudson) in 1849. This signaled the opening of legal settlement. [33]

Farmers and the Repopulation of the Valley

In the 1850s, the St. Croix Valley boomed. Most of the prosperity came from logging. However, the lure of cheap land encouraged land speculators as well as simple farmers to seek their fortunes in the West. In this decade the entire country was on the move. It is estimated that in 1850 nearly one in four Americans moved from one state to another. And between 1847 and 1854 immigration to the United States from Europe hit its peak during the first major wave of immigration to this country before the Civil War. Once these migrants reached the Mississippi River, the St. Croix River's natural advantage as a major artery of transportation worked in its favor. Wisconsin was determined to steer as many of these people to the state as possible. [34] Part of the problem the valley had to dispel, however, was its image as a frozen, barren wasteland for permanent settlement and farming. [35]

Throughout the decade of the 1850s, St. Croix newspapers continuously bragged about the North Country's comparable advantages to the regions below it. These papers were distributed widely. A settler from Osceola wrote to the St. Croix Union of that areas advantages "knowing that it, as well as all other papers from this part of the State, have an extensive circulation, and that they are eagerly caught up and read by persons in different parts of the States who are interested, or have any idea of coming to the North Western country." [36] Local newspaper articles were reprinted in such prominent publications as the New York Tribune.

In an era before modern medicine and public health boards curbed epidemic diseases, before swamps and marshes that teamed with malarial mosquitoes were drained for cultivation and agricultural science gained control of other pests, and before modern technology, such as the air conditioner, could make warmer climes more comfortable and tolerable, Minnesota and Wisconsin argued that its cooler climate eliminated pests and health threats without sacrificing agricultural productivity. "Hundreds and hundreds of families," wrote the Stillwater Messenger, "are annually driven from other Western States to take up their residence in Minnesota to escape this offensive and troublesome foe [fever, ague, consumption] to the emigrant and his family." [37] Travel writer E. S. Seymour had interviewed residents of Marine Mills who confirmed the healthful benefits of Minnesota compared to Illinois. "I was impelled by curiosity. . .to inquiry of Mr. Lyman why he had left the fertile soil and sunny prairies of Illinois, and wandered off here in the woods, in the northern clime," Seymour related. "He stated, in reply, that he had been severely afflicted with the ague in southern Illinois; that his constitution had become nearly broken down by the disease. Many of the young men of his neighborhood came up to work at the Marine Mills, and he noticed that all returned with recruited health, although suffering with ague at the time of their departure." Mr. Lyman, therefore, decided to seek relief in the North Country. When he arrived, he was so weak he could scarcely walk from the landing to the boarding house. "He was immediately restored to the enjoyment of excellent health." [38]

"As to the Agricultural capabilities of Minnesota as compared with those of Illinois," wrote the St. Croix Union, "we have this to say: Minnesota is a far better country for the producing of some agricultural staples than Illinois." Among the region's advantages was in the production of oats, wheat, Irish potatoes, and garden vegetables. While the paper admitted that the growing season was shorter up north, it argued that crops matured more quickly here due to its richer soil, nighttime rainfall, and warm sun. "The vegetable productions of a northern climate are generally superior to those produced in a lower latitude. For this reason Minnesota wheat, corn, potatoes, etc. will doubtless command a premium in the Southern markets." The north woods were also a hunter's paradise teaming with fish, fowl, and game. [39] The forests and marshes were also abundant in wild rice and cranberries that had been a staple of the Indians' diet. Whatever their feeling about Indians, white settlers quickly learned to appreciate their gastronomic delicacies and even used them as a selling point for the region. "We have used this kind of rice a number of times" wrote the Hudson Star, "and believe it to be richer and better than the southern rice, and equally wholesome." [40]

The Stillwater Messenger also engaged in the promotion of the Minnesota Territory for would-be emigrants. It claimed, "Minnesota is the healthiest State in the Union." Its soil was among the most fertile in the country. "It is rich with decayed vegetable matter, yet owing to the large proportion of silica which it contains it neither bakes in dry weather nor becomes very muddy in wet. Minnesota is almost entirely exempt from that intolerable nuisance — mud!" In an era before paved roads and when fields were manually plowed and sowed, mud produced by rain or melting snow was a major problem. New England states were particularly plagued by this problem. Minnesota's and northern Wisconsin's other advantages compared to the prairie states below them was that they were one of the best timbered and one of the best watered- and water-powered regions in the country. "Owing to the numerous navigable streams that traverse the territory, Minnesota has for seven months each year advantages unsurpassed for interior communications," the Messenger related. The St. Croix Union echoed its claim when it wrote, "The publication of these and other facts which characterize Minnesota as a competitor for Western Emigration. . .would do more good than all the newspapers combined. . .in the distribution of intelligence." [41]

Given the challenge of wintering in northern Wisconsin and Minnesota, North Country settlers could not ignore the reservations expressed about this region's weather. Many residents tried to minimize its harsher realities by emphasizing the positive side to winter snows. "Sometimes we have good sledding for 100 days in succession," the St. Croix Union bragged. "The farmer, or lumberman can make all his arrangements for hauling on the snow, with a perfect assurance that they can be consummated." [42] Humor, too, proved a useful coping mechanism. "It is an established fact," wrote the St. Croix Union, "that it (Minnesota) is not further north than the North Pole, and that men can winter here without becoming congealed like mercury when it is subjected to cold about 40o below zero." [43] And "Here we have snow, snow, snow everyday; it remains with us like a true friend." Minnesotans argued that this was a great advantage to the damp chill and mud that marked eastern winters. The Stillwater Messenger could not help but gloat after eastern newspapers reported that frost had arrived in Connecticut by September 9^th "–three weeks earlier than Minnesota." The tinkling of sleigh bells on a bright, brisk winter day prompted many to claim, "that the winters are the most delightful season of the year," and would make others "envy Minnesota life." [44]

Another advantage Minnesota boasted of to attract settlers was that it still had plenty of land that could be claimed under the pre-emption law. Although land offices had opened up in the late 1840s along the St. Croix River, surveying teams had yet to finish their work. A squatter could still claim choice land of up to160 acres without having to first purchase it. He could farm it, thus making an exclusive claim as well as have the opportunity to sell his crops and raise money to purchase the land at $1.25 per acre before it was put up for sale. Under this system the average settler was able to beat out land speculators who purchased large tracts of land and held on to them until values increased and a tidy profit could be made without any improvements made to the land. [45]

Land speculators, though, were not completely absent from this Minnesota frontier. Simeon P. Folsom, a land agent from St. Paul, advertised his three thousand acres near White Bear Lake in St. Croix Valley newspapers. He claimed his company aimed to sell its land to "actual farmers," and would provide them with "prices and terms that will make them the cheapest lands in that section." Tracts of land were not to be sold under one-hundred-and-sixty acres. Banks also tried to make a profit out of the popular preemption. If a squatter had not made the money necessary to purchase his land when it came up for sale, the Banking Office of C.H. Parker, and Co. in Stillwater gladly provided "reasonable terms." [46]

There was also a ready local market for farm products with the logging companies. "Those who desire to settle on lands where the pine lumber interest will furnish them a market for surplus produce," wrote St. Croix Union, "we would direct to the. . .rich valley of the St. Croix." [47] Throughout the 1850s many logging encampments still imported much of their food from states to the south, such as Iowa, Illinois, and parts of Wisconsin. [48] In 1850, E.S. Seymour verified these observations of the St. Croix Valley. "This portion of the country will always have a good market for agricultural products," he explained to prospective pioneers. "Surrounded as it is by a manufacturing district, and by populous towns springing into existence on the Mississippi and the St. Croix, it is not too much to predict that it will, ere long, be dotted with farmhouses, and enlivened with the songs of multitudes of cheerful and thriving husbandmen." [49]

While newspapers of the St. Croix Valley did their best to promote the North Country, Wisconsin's state legislature decided more aggressive tactics were needed to lure settlers. In 1852, it passed an act that established the position of Commissioner of Emigration with an office in New York. The following year it added a traveling agent to aid its recruiting efforts. The commissioner's office annually distributed approximately thirty thousand copies of a pamphlet that described Wisconsin's singular features. John Lathrop, the chancellor of the University of Wisconsin in Madison, authored the tract. Trying to dispel fears of a hostile, northern environment, Lathrop wrote that Wisconsin's climate and topography compared well with New York and New England. It was perhaps even milder and more beautiful. Its soil was richer. It was certainly more healthful than the east coast with its diseases and epidemics and free of the hot, stagnant, malarial-infested lands of Illinois and Indiana. It certainly had more timber than these prairie states. The commissioner's office sent half of these pamphlets to Europe. The other half was distributed to ships and hotels in the East. Traveling agents posted advertisements in more than nine hundred newspapers throughout the northeast and Canada. Once in Wisconsin, the office gave migrants personal assistance. It also worked with emigration societies, foreign consuls, shipping lines, railroad companies, and freight handlers. By 1854, the emigration office opened operations in Quebec. [50]

Competition between states for immigrant settlers was fierce. Although it was still a territory, Minnesota refused to be outdone by Wisconsin. In January 1855, the Governor of the territory requested that the Minnesota Territorial Legislature establish an emigration office. "We need not stop to inquire why it is that thousands of our fathers, brothers, and friends can content themselves to stick to the worn out and comparatively barren soil of the old States, rather than seek a home in this invigorating and healthy climate, and fertile soil," the governor asserted to the legislature. "They will soon find out our facilities for wealth and comfort, when we take steps to advertise them." Upon the governor's request the legislature opened an emigration office in New York City. Its purpose was to provide "correct information of our Territory, its soil, climate, population, productions, agricultural, manufacturing and educational facilities, and prospects." The governor complained that he received numerous inquiries from other states about Minnesota winters and whether it is so cold "stock freezes to death, and man hardly dare venture out of his domicile." The governor also asked the legislature to prepare "a brief well written pamphlet giving the facts." [51]

St. Croix newspapers heartily endorsed these efforts. "The emigrant whose purpose is to find a home in the west, on his arrival at our eastern ports," wrote the St. Croix Union, "must hail with heartfelt joy the man who can give him reliable information in regard to any portion of our unoccupied lands, and who can instruct him what route to take in order to reach these lands." The paper expressed approval at the selection of a native of Switzerland who was fluent in many languages to be the territory's emigration agent and that he took the trouble to visit the St. Croix Valley to survey the land before he set out for the East. [52] "We understand he is much pleased with this section of our Territory," wrote the St. Croix Union. "The prospects for Stillwater and the beautiful Valley of the St. Croix are very flattering, and we may expect a large immigration the present season." [53]

The 1850s were exciting years for the St. Croix Valley. Its development and prosperity seemed assured and unlimited. Newcomers arrived regularly by steamboat. Once in the valley their movement up and down the river was facilitated by the construction of a military road that was completed in 1856 from the Point Douglas area northward to Sunrise, a distance of approximately sixty miles. Logging, was of course, the first booming enterprise, but the decade also marked the emergence of agriculture beyond a subsistence scale of garden vegetables, potatoes, and corn. The St. Croix River Valley encompassed an area from twenty to ninety miles wide and approximately 120 miles long. W.H.C. Folsom claimed that, "About eight-tenths of this entire valley is fitted by nature for agriculture." [54] Pioneers and speculators responded to all the advertisements. Between 1849 and 1863, Hudson did a "land office" business, especially in the middle years of the decade. In 1849, it sold 9,097 acres. From 1854 through 1856 over 500,000 acres of land went into private hands. By 1863, the peak was over as only 1700 acres were transacted. [55]

Ancient glaciers had shaped the St. Croix Valley's geological features and determined its potential for agriculture. When the Superior and Grantsburg ice lobes melted, large glacial lakes formed north of the St. Croix Valley. The remainder of the glacial melt-off drained through the St. Croix Valley. The first glacial river cut broad terraces into the sand and deposited gravel along the way. When the St. Croix's ancestral river formed, it cut deeply into the underlying bedrock and formed more terraces. Once the valley was deepened, streams that fed into the St. Croix also cut through the sand, gravel, and underlying bedrock making deep side ravines in what is now Washington and Chisago Counties. When the glacial lakes had finished draining, the river that ran through the St. Croix Valley became smaller and unable to carry all the sediment coming from the northern country and it began to fill up the valley. Washington County sits on approximately one hundred feet of sediment. Lake St. Croix was created when some of this sediment damned the river. Sand and decaying plants formed wetland, marshes, and peat bogs along the river way. [56]

The climate would also profoundly affect agriculture. The St. Croix Valley is in what is known as the Wisconsin tension zone that divides the state into two distinct floral and vegetation regions. In the northern zone, the climate is generally marked by cool, dry, continental arctic air masses from Canada. Its winters are longer, colder and snowier. In the southern zone, the climate is influenced by the interaction of Pacific air, warmed and dried from its passage over the Rocky Mountains, and warm, moist, tropical air from the Gulf of Mexico. Its summers are longer and warmer and snowfall varies. In this tension zone is a mixture of vegetation common in the southern part of the state, such as prairie, oak-savanna, and southern-hardwood forests as well as vegetation common in the northern zone, such as boreal forests, conifer-hardwood forest, and pine savanna. [57]

The first farmers in the St. Croix Valley faced the challenge of discerning the quality of the soil in this geologically and climatically varied landscape. Those who arrived first had the advantage of choosing prime prairie land along the lower St. Croix. Farmers who sought land further up river found woodlands of pine, tamarack, cedar, balsam as well as hardwoods with scatterings of wild meadows and marshes. Those who settled in these clearings began the slow, laborious task of felling one tree at a time to increase their farm acreage. Throughout the lower half of the river, farmers found that the rich, virgin soil produced bountiful harvests, and that the St. Croix provided easy access to southern markets.

The first strictly agricultural settlements in the St. Croix Valley had started in the Mississippi and St. Croix River delta, near Prescott, Red Rock, Cottage Grove, Lakeland, and Afton. [58] Much of this area was composed of prairie land. [59] Near present day Afton farming began quite early. French settlers had come here in 1837. By 1839, local desire for food beyond what could be scavenged in the countryside prompted the breaking of the first farmland. By the winter of 1845-46 Afton had a flourmill -- the first gristmill north of Prairie du Chien. The area was ideal for farming. W.H.C. Folsom described a good part of Afton as "rolling prairie." The rest of the land was a patchwork of woods and fields. "The soil is all productive," Folsom claimed, "and the streams afford good water powers." [60] However, Philander Prescott, who began farming in the early 1840s near his namesake town, complained there was no market for his goods thus discouraging more ambitious farming. [61] However, as pioneers began moving into the valley in the 1850s, the delta region was the first area they saw before heading up river. It did not take long for would-be farmers to recognize its potential. Many stopped for a look around. In 1853, one settler noted that the "steady tread of the immigrant land looker" wore down roads where none had been before. [62] In 1854, a guide pamphlet entitled, "Description of Pierce County," described the Prescott area as composed of terraces of limestone and sandstone deposits that created "a beautiful prairie." Decomposing limestone fertilized the fine sand and clay soil. By 1856, the wheat harvests were bountiful enough to encourage the town of Prescott to erect its first flourmill and begin exporting its agricultural surplus. [63]

Just north of the delta and on the Wisconsin side of the St. Croix River was another vast stretch of prairie land that began at what is now the town of Hudson and extended to the Willow River, up to the Apple River on the north and down to the Kinnickinnic River on the south. [64] Many early pioneers recognized its value and took advantage of the pre-emption law to squat on the land before it was surveyed. When the surveying work was completed and the land here was opened to the public on August 23, 1848, many squatters were ready to make their claim. On the first day of filing three men, Louis Massey, Peter Boucha, and Eleazer Steves, claimed nearly all the land fronting Lake St. Croix. These Yankee settlers were taken by the resemblance of the St. Croix to the Hudson River Valley in New York and had the new town christened "Hudson."

Despite its Yankee name, Hudson's steamboat landing became an immigrant port of entry for the St. Croix Valley. Newcomers from many different countries disembarked there for the rich prairie lands to the east of the town and made Hudson's population very ethnically and religiously diverse. In 1854, the St. Croix Union commented "It appears to contain a very intelligent, industrious, and enterprising population, whose principal aim appears to be, to make Hudson, the town of the St. Croix valley." The Stillwater paper, however, added, "with the exception of Stillwater, they will doubtless succeed." The Wisconsin legislature's chartering the St. Croix, Superior, and Bayfield Railway that year no doubt provoked the paper's defensiveness. Many people along the St. Croix had speculated that Hudson would become the "metropolis of the west." Stillwater's actions to keep itself out of Wisconsin had backfired on this issue. The Badger state's legislature could hardly be expected to promote a Minnesota town as the terminus for its railroad. By the end of the 1850s the booming town of Hudson boasted Methodist, Baptist, Congregational, Episcopal, Presbyterian, and Roman Catholic churches. [65]

Church and community played a role in the settlement of the backcountry prairie land as illustrated by the stories of a devote Episcopalian from New York state named Varnum Maxon and two brothers, Thomas and Trueworthy Jewell from Massachusetts. In 1846 Maxon claimed land near Cedar Lake for the Episcopal Church. He returned back to New York and recruited fourteen families who arrived by wagon train in 1856. The Jewell brothers came west in 1854 and were taken by the beauty of the countryside that reminded them of their old home in New England. They decided to stay and bought seven hundred acres of land near present day Star Prairie. This was the first contract of this type in the St. Croix Valley. They then offered free lots to anyone back home who would set up homesteads here. [66]

A few Irish immigrants made their way to this farming frontier in 1855. Unlike most migrants to the valley the first ones took the overland route and arrived by way of four covered wagons pulled by eight oxen. They chose to homestead along the east fork of the Kinnickinnic River, near present day Town of Pleasant Valley. Lawrence Hawkins led the party of eighteen who all began their journey back in County Galway, Ireland in 1852. They had stopped along the way in Connecticut and then in Madison before finding their way to the St. Croix Valley, a sort of "promised land" for them, and formed the nucleus of an Irish farming community. [67]

German immigrants also carved out a place for themselves in the St. Croix Valley. In 1851, Haley and Nicholas Schwalen disembarked in Hudson having come all the way from Hunsfeldt, Germany. They were looking for a large tract of land to support a small community of German farmers they planned to bring over. They selected a site approximately six miles southeast of Hudson, and then returned to Germany. The Schwalens organized their family and friends into an emigration party and set sail for America. At sea they battled cholera. By 1852, they landed in Racine, Wisconsin and then took the water route from Chicago to Galena and then up the Mississippi River, this time fighting off diphtheria. Once they reached Hudson, the entire group had no choice but to live in one building until individual families could file their claims and build their own homes. They survived in their first years by selling their products, particularly butter, to the townspeople in Hudson. The "German Settlement," as it became known, eventually prospered. "The soil is the best I have seen in America," wrote H.H Montman to his parents in Germany. "They have birch trees just like in Germany. The climate is very much as it is at home." [68]

The ethnic diversity of this prairie region was further enhanced by the arrival of Dutch immigrants to the area near present day Baldwin. The Dutch generally organized a whole community to emigrate together across the Atlantic. Many who came to Wisconsin settled in the southeastern portion of the state, but some pushed further on to the St. Croix Valley. The first Dutch pioneers reached the St. Croix in 1857 after a long, hard overland journey. Another Dutch group took trains to the Mississippi and then tried to make it the rest of the way to Hudson by river. Although technically spring when they arrived in April, the Mississippi north of Winona was still frozen over. The group continued by rail to St. Paul and then made their way by foot to the Baldwin area. [69]

French-Canadian settlers, or the Quebecois, added to the ethnic mix of the St. Croix Valley. Unlike their fur-trading forbearers, they came with the intention of farming. Their farms along the St. Lawrence River were too small to prosper much. In 1851, Joseph and Louis Parent chose a spot along the Apple River. Their enthusiasm for the location was communicated in their letters back home, and soon a stream of French-Canadians made their way to the St. Croix Valley. By 1890, nearly two hundred families of French-Canadian decent lived along the Apple River up to the town of Somerset. [70]

The land further up river from Stillwater began to display some of the variety common to the tension zone. Most of it was heavily wooded or marsh and swamp land with smaller patches of clearings. [71] The land was very rich and fertile with glacial sediment, but breaking ground for farming in this region was an even greater challenge since the land had to be cleared of trees first. One of the few areas that had stretches of prairie in this area was near Osceola on the Wisconsin side of the St. Croix. Its rich prairie land gently rolled to the bluffs along the river. "Osceola [has a]. . .beautiful situation, commanding a fine view of the river in both directions for miles," wrote the St. Croix Union in 1855, "there is no place that had such prospects to become ultimately a large and flourishing place of business." [72] The town became the county seat for Polk County, and also had a good stretch of river bottomland for an ideal steamboat landing. One resident wrote, "I can without any hesitation, pronounce it the best landing from Point Douglas to the Falls. . .The land within two miles of this place is all taken up in farms and under good cultivation, and had hitherto produced abundant crops." [73] Farmers were also lured to the area by the prospect of selling their products to local lumber companies. "Corn is worth $1, and at this time the loggers are offering seventy five cents for oats and cannot get them at that as they are scarce. For the want of farmers up here the loggers have to buy their corn, Oats, Flour and Pork, below." [74] These features attracted farmers as did access to Osceola and Close's Creeks. They created the nucleus of a prosperous farming community and Osceola became one of the first wheat producing areas in the St. Croix Valley. Osceola Creek provided an ideal site for a water-powered flourmill that was built in 1853. However, the settlement of Polk County was much slower than lower down river because of the difficulty of breaking ground in this more wooded area. The population did not take off until after 1866. It would then prosper as a farming country in the years to follow. [75]

During the 1850s wheat began to rival logging as a valley export. The St. Croix River gave settlers a transportation advantage not enjoyed by all farmers in Wisconsin. Until railroads penetrated into the hinterland of the frontier many farmers could not participate in commercial agriculture. While many farmers in more remote regions depended upon local markets and bartered goods, St. Croix farmers were able to engage in a national market almost from the time they broke ground. Wheat became their first commercial crop, and it was an ideal first crop for a pioneer farmer. Unlike other crops, which required careful cultivation or large start up costs like animal husbandry, wheat was easy to grow. Unlike corn, which required more refined breaking of the root-packed prairie sod to allow its own deep roots to grow, the soil for wheat only needed minimal preparation before sowing. Tree stumps did not even have to be removed. The wheat then could be ignored until harvest. In the meantime, the farmer could spend the rest of his time clearing more land and fencing it in. When harvested, wheat had a ready market, and was considered as "good as money." Wheat was easily stored in private warehouses. Farmers were then issued wheat "receipts," "tickets," or "certificates," which they could then use in local stores. "As good as wheat" was a common expression on the frontier, which implied that it was often used in lieu of money. Farmers could then obtain other merchandise they needed. The Prairie Farmer, published in Chicago, celebrated the virtues of wheat production claiming "It pays debts, buys, groceries, clothing, lands, and answers more emphatically the purposes of trade than any other crop." St. Croix farmers could not help but concur with this observation. [76]

The Willow, Apple, and Kinnickinnic Rivers and their tributary creeks offered many prime locations for mills to turn wheat into its marketable form of flour. Gristmills usually ground grain for a local farmer's use, but it did not take long for the first commercial flour mills to appear. Caleb Greene and Charles Cox built the first mill in this area on the Willow River in 1853-4. They called it "Greene's Paradise Mill, and "Paradise" became its brand name. Local farmers often helped repair the sand road to the mill whenever it washed out. The Bowron brothers followed suit by building a second mill near the confluence of the Cedar Lake Creek and the Apple River. In 1855, Horace Greeley, the renowned editor of the New York Tribune, took a trip up the St. Croix River and proclaimed, "The cry is Wheat!! Wheat!!. . .Every steamboat goes down the river with all the wheat on board she will take, and a couple of wheat laden barges fat to her side." Many predicted that the farmer would follow the lumbermen as the forests receded and the entire North County would be turned into an agricultural paradise. [77]

Wheat was not the only export from the St. Croix Valley during these years. Cranberries, which were native to the area, grew wild in the abundant marshes lands scattered throughout the woodlands. It did not take long for settlers to realize the potential profit from harvesting what grew naturally and cultivating it to enhance their harvest. The first experiments with systematic cultivating began in the late 1840s near Stillwater. The travel writer E.S. Seymour noted "the soil and climate of this region are so well adapted to their culture. . .it is not unreasonable to presume that its culture may, hereafter, become so general as to render it a prominent article among the staples of Minnesota." [78] "We hear of [cranberries] selling at from $3 to $4 per bushel," wrote the St. Croix Union in 1855, "We believe that even at $1 per bushel they might be grown with a great profit." The paper explained how to cultivate cranberry vines and claimed; "One acre will yield from 200 to 400 bushels each season. This would be better than corn, or wheat or almost any other crop." [79] By 1859, the St. Croix cranberry trade exceeded ten thousand dollars with five thousand bushels of the fruit harvested netting two dollars per bushel. [80] Wild blackberries also had a ready market. "These berries are found in great abundance in the valley above us," the Stillwater Messenger reported, "and are of a very fine quality." [81]

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.

Land Speculation and Growing Pains

In 1856, John Bond expressed the optimism of the time when he wrote in his territorial guidebook, "The immigration to Minnesota is composed of men who come with the well-founded assurance that, in a land where Nature had lavished her choicest gifts — where sickness has no dwelling place — where the dreaded cholera has claimed no victims — their toil will be amply rewarded, while their persons and property are fully protected by the broad shield of law." [96] This rosy picture of the North Country led to a "real estate mania" in the valley. Yankee land speculators bought up land along the river gambling on its value increasing with the influx of newcomers. There were high expectations that the timber resources and waterpower would transform the region into a great manufacturing center. In 1855, the St. Croix Union wrote that from Taylors Fall began "A succession of falls and rapids six miles in length, creating one of the most extensive water powers in the North-west, and easily controlled. With the materials for manufacturing with which the St. Croix Valley abounds, there must spring up here manufacturing cities which may surpass Lowell, Nashua, or Lawrence [Massachusetts]." [97]

Land that had been claimed under pre-emption and bought for $1.25 per acre sold for $5.00 an acre after it had been "improved" with a small lean-to and a small tract of broken sod. Dozens of towns were platted, many before they were even surveyed and their exact location specified. But buyers both in the St. Croix Valley and in the East willingly bought them. Eastern capitalists also poured large sums of money into St. Paul banks that in turn made loans of three percent to land investors in the valley. [98] In some of the more settled towns, it was said that a parcel of land that sold for five hundred dollars in the morning could fetch a thousand dollars by evening. All it took was a fast-talking salesman who could convince an unwary buyer that he could hear a train whistle in the not-too-distant future. As a local commentator put it, "Every settler felt himself a prospective millionaire, and the public imagination soared high with greedy hope." [99] Even remote settlements like Sunrise encouraged speculators. "I shall not undertake to express an opinion," wrote a local resident in 1856, "as to the advantages of this point as a place for investments. . .The confidence of everyone owning property here. . .is its value, I will venture to say,' has increased, is increasing, and ought' not ‘to be diminished." [100]

The one town that did not experience this rush of development was St. Croix Falls. It was situated in a picturesque setting near waterfalls that dropped fifty-five feet in a six-mile stretch. The turbulent falls never had the opportunity to freeze in the winter. This feature made it an ideal location for year-round water-powered manufacturing. Ironically, it was the early recognition of St. Croix Falls's assets that ignited the "greedy hope" that in turn arrested its development. The town's growth was put on hold through most of the 1850s due to the bitter lawsuit between Caleb Cushing and William Hungerford. When it was finally resolved in Cushing's favor in 1857, a financial panic hit the country, and Cushing, back east, lost touch with his Wisconsin interests. His lack of attention continued throughout the Civil War. Cushing and Hungerford "unitedly accomplished the ruin of their town," wrote Folsom. Other hindrances to pioneering in the St. Croix Falls area was of course, its dense forest land. It did not help matters to have the land office, which was opened in 1848, moved to Stillwater in the Minnesota Territory and to Willow River (Hudson) further down river in Wisconsin in 1849. No significant settlement took place in the area before the Civil War. [101]

There was only one other holdup to progress in areas near the pineries, one observer noted wistfully, "It is that there are but few women. We saw scores of old bachelors who have pined away their three and thirty without being consoled by the smiles of this fair portion of God's Creation." Local towns did not have any females to spare. A plea went out to the East "that their philanthropy be extended towards us and the goodly bach's of Taylor's Falls, and that they do send by their earliest possible convenience, a cargo of this valuable commodity. . .Minnesota's sons will welcome the first boat as the most valuable cargo that ever ascended the St. Croix." [102]

Although giddy with hope for the future prosperity of the St. Croix Valley, the communities here did not escape the growing pains experienced by the rest of the country as different groups from across the country and the Atlantic Ocean converged into small towns and farming hamlets. By the mid-1850s many "native" Americans, meaning Anglo-Protestants, became increasingly alarmed at the large number of foreigners, especially Catholics, swarming into the country. They felt the essential free and democratic character of the United States was in jeopardy. Protestants accused the highly centralized, authoritarian Roman Catholic Church of anti-democratic tendencies. Catholics had not been schooled in independent, democratic practices, they argued. Their church required slavish devotion, and their parochial school undermined the public school, which was the backbone of a democratic society. The American party, popularly known as the Know-Nothings, aimed to restrict immigration by limiting office holding to native-born Americans and to restrict citizenship to those who had lived in the United States for twenty-one years. This platform was aimed at states like Wisconsin that had generously offered the vote to foreign-born persons who lived in the state for one year — a first in the country. Many nativist politicians succeeded in gaining office throughout the country, and it looked like immigration and the rights of foreign-born people might be severely curtailed. By the end of the decade, however, the nativist movement foundered on the growing sectional crisis over slavery, and the Know-Nothing Party disappeared from the national stage. Some of its members were absorbed into the new Republican Party that muted nativism under its slogan of, "Free Soil, Free Men, Free Labor." However, the damage was done in Wisconsin. The state legislature was forced to disband its entire emigration agency. It was not revived until after the Civil War. [103]

The nativist movement's tentacles had reached even the raw frontier communities along the St. Croix River. Many Yankee New Englanders, who played a key role in felling the forests and developing the towns along the St. Croix River, harbored nativist sentiment. After an election in 1857, the Stillwater Messenger, a Republican paper, printed derisive comments about Irish voters. The paper complained that they voted as a "solid phalanx" in soiled, shabby clothing. The Democratic St. Croix Union angrily responded:

The Messenger has unwittingly showed the cloven foot. The great majority of the black Republicans hate an Irishman much worse that they do the devil himself, and the Messenger. . .publicly proclaims what is privately taught by their leaders. They hate an Irishman, and some of them are determined that the Irish, and Dutch, and French, and all foreigners, shall be deprived of the right of suffrage. . .Our opinion is, that any foreigner, if he be naturalized, or has declared his intention to become naturalized, has as good a right to vote as a native born. [104]

The St. Croix Valley, however, could not do without immigrant labor. The St. Croix Union argued a more pragmatic approach to the immigrant issue. It claimed:

Strike out what the Irishman has done for America, and the country would be set back fifty years in the path of progress. Corn would grow where the Erie canal bears the freight of millions of fertile acres; the lumbering coach would take the place of flying trains on ten thousand miles of railroad...Hundreds of millions of dollars could not purchase from the American people the property and advantages that have absolutely been bestowed upon them by Irish labor. . .it is an essential element in American thrift and progress and we could not lose it for a month without recurrence of chaos. [105]

By 1860, the Stillwater Messenger showed acceptance of Protestant immigrant groups. It described Scandinavians as "hardy, industrious, frugal and honest people" who were "succeeding well" in Minnesota. Of the Germans it wrote, "The enterprise of the German people who had come among us, and the success which has almost invariably rewarded their laborious and indefatigable efforts. . .have had the effect to induce a large emigration of that worthy class of people among us." But the Scandinavians and many Germans were Protestants, which perhaps made them easier to accept. Some bitterness towards Irish Catholics still lingered in the paper when it wrote that, "The emigrants expected from Ireland this season, are said to be of a superior class from those usually found among us, belonging mainly to the agricultural class, educated, and pretty generally Protestants, and possessed of some money and means." [106]

Wisconsin's emigration office, however, had been successful in laying the basis for the state to become one of the most ethnically diverse in the country. While recruitment of new immigrants was left now in private hands, it proved no less effective. "American letters" from friends and relatives who made it to Wisconsin enticed their European counterparts to make the journey themselves. Churches also played a critical role in this "chain migration," where letters, money, immigrant guide books, and even prepaid ship fares were sent to the old country to bring the next group over to start a new life on the Wisconsin frontier. [107]

Sectional issues and the collapse of the Know-Nothings were perhaps less important to the decline in nativism in the St. Croix Valley than economic issues. In 1857, a natural downturn in the national business cycle provoked a general panic as holders of banknotes rushed to their banks for redemption. Many banks temporarily suspended specie payment and others completely failed. An economic depression followed as businesses throughout the North folded. While most of Wisconsin's banks remained solvent, it was among the worst hit states by the economic downturn. For two to three years coins and reliable banknotes were extremely hard to come by. Wisconsin businessmen then could not pay their eastern creditors. Loans were impossible to obtain. In many areas the economy reverted to the primitive system of bartering goods and services. Federal land sales plummeted. [108]

The panic reached into the St. Croix frontier since logging companies and land speculators had financial ties to the East and saw its markets for lumber collapse. Cash and credit quickly evaporated. Land agencies folded. Several banks in the valley, such as the Hudson City Bank, the St. Croix Valley Bank, the Farmers and Mechanics Bank, and the Chisago County Bank were forced to close their doors. Wildcat currency was refused, and barter became the only means to exchange goods. In November 1857, the Stillwater Messenger made a plea for farmers to sell their wheat they had been holding on to in the hope of fetching higher prices later in order to keep the economy solvent. "There cannot be a greater mistake than for the farmers to hold on to their grain in hopes of higher prices, rather than sell at present prices and pay their indebtedness to country merchants and other creditors," the newspaper wrote. "For in the present unsettled state of the money market, capitalists will not invest money for wheat in store, except at very low rates. . .a considerable rise in the price of wheat is very dim, and it is more likely to go lower than higher." It argued that it was also a matter of "justice and common honesty. . .[to] sell their crop and pay their debts." "It is their neglect to do this, which is the main cause of the money pressure," the Messenger asserted. "The city merchant cannot pay his debts in New York or Boston, because the country merchant cannot pay because the farmers. . .are indebted to him for one, two, and sometimes for even three years' purchases. And here is the root of the whole evil." One way settlers remained economically solvent was to harvest ginseng. Ginseng was a common wild plant that grew in shady places close to the ground. This aromatic root could be immediately sold to markets in China, where it was considered to have magical medicinal powers. Settlers along the Wisconsin River and the St. Croix were among the chief gatherers of this international export. [109]

The financial panic also brought the land speculation frenzy to an end. Antipathy towards speculators had been building for the last few years. Certainly the Cushing vs. Hungerford affair was the most glaring example of speculators single-handedly interfering with "progress." [110] Cushing became the embodiment of the evil non-resident speculator in the St. Croix Valley for years to come. Residents from Marine Mills complained as early as 1855 that speculators were responsible for the slow growth of the town. "The most pernicious of all, which has, perhaps, caused the sluggish growth of this town," wrote one settler, was "the grasping, griping propensity: ‘Get all you can and hold on to all you get,'" of land speculators. [111] By 1857, these land hogs were blamed for holding up development throughout the St. Croix Valley. Land here was "principally owned by non-resident speculators," complained one resident, which "renders its agricultural development almost impossible. The evil effects of throwing large bodies of Government land into markets at one time, to be taken up by moneyed speculators to the exclusion of actual settlers, is terribly made manifest in the immediate vicinity of the St. Croix. This deplorable landed monopoly is the only barrier this portion of Minnesota meets in its onward progress." [112] Many of the towns that had been platted with high hopes and expectations never materialized. W.H.C. Folsom wryly noted that the "town" of Drontheim in Chisago County, which had been platted in 1856, was "still a brush and swamp plat" in the 1880s. The "town" of Chippewa in Chisago County, which was platted the same year, Folsom facetiously noted, "makes a fair farm." [113]

The financial panic also changed the course of agricultural settlement and development along the St. Croix. Land speculators in Marine Mills were forced to unload their monopoly on town lots "on very favorable terms." [114] And it spurred a farming boom. Hundreds of people, who had been reluctant to get into farming because of the insect pests, drought, and prairie fires that plagued the first farmers, abandoned towns for the land when money and employment evaporated. By the spring of 1858 the amount of land brought under cultivation in Minnesota had doubled. [115] In Marine Mills the change in the economy finally brought to the town the completion of a flourmill that it bragged was "superior to any other in Minnesota." [116]

The experience of Irish immigrants to the St. Croix provides a good example of how an economy that went bust pushed them into farming. Wisconsin's eagerness for internal improvements and economic development of its north country in the early 1850s had also acted as a recruiting agent for immigrants to the state and the St. Croix Valley. In 1854, the Wisconsin legislature chartered the St. Croix, Superior and Bayfield Railway to extend through Hudson. Congress soon after relinquished the land for the right-of-way, and the people of Hudson raised forty-seven thousand dollars in subscriptions for the railroad. When work began, a large colony of Irish railway workers came to Hudson. They joined their compatriots who had come to work on the river in the logging industry. When the financial panic struck, many Irish loggers and railroad workers lost their jobs. Many moved out onto "the prairie" and joined the small Irish farming community in Erin Prairie on the Willow River. [117] In 1860, nearly all the heads of families in Erin Township were born in Ireland. Erin Prairie became a prosperous farming community and dispelled the negative stereotypes of the Irish as "barroom loafers" and "ignorant." [118]

Throughout most of Wisconsin lumbering remained in a slump for nearly three years after the panic. National demand for lumber eventually helped the St. Croix Valley make some recovery from the panic, and by 1859 the business community was on the upswing. The growth of agriculture, however, played a significant role in the turn-around of the area economy. St. Croix farmers, anxious to make quick cash, indulged in wheat growing. Cheap land, good soil, and access to a national market made this possible. The St. Croix and Mississippi Rivers, of course, were the main highways for agricultural export, particularly to states south. By the late 1850s railroads enhanced their connections to eastern markets. In 1857, a railroad reached Prairie du Chien and another reached La Crosse in 1858. Wheat was then shipped to the Port of Milwaukee and east through the Great Lakes. The economic opportunities were obvious in the St. Croix. "A farmer can crop one hundred acres of wheat in Minnesota," wrote the Stillwater Messenger in the spring of 1859, "with no more expense than it would cost to crop thirty in any of the Middle States, provided he makes use of all the modern appliances." [119]

The St. Croix Valley's wheat boom was possible because its soil was still rich and fertile when the soil in the lower Midwest and Great Lakes region was exhausted and these areas were unable to meet the national demand. A contributor for the Ohio Farmer admitted to the Stillwater Messenger, "It is already shown that Ohio can produce crops that are better for her soil and climate than wheat; one good crop in three years is about all we can expect." In southern Michigan, southern Wisconsin, Indiana, and Illinois "the result is no better." The scientific thinking of the time argued that wheat grew better above forty-five degrees latitude and corn grew better below that. "When the country has had a few more years of cultivation," the Ohio Farmer advised Minnesotans, "there will appear in the New York market, flour barrels with Minnesota brands, and that it will be of superior quality." Railroads, the Messenger, argued were key to reaching eastern markets via Lake Superior. "That accomplished, the time will not be far distant when Minnesota flour will find European markets without the expense of a single trans-shipment." [120]

By May 1859, the Messenger could brag that, "The past season is the first season that Minnesota has been a produce-exporting State." Two thousand three hundred and seventy sacks of grain and potatoes had been load onto a steamboat at Hudson. Another packet shipped out thirty-five hundred sacks. "The change from an importing to an exporting community has been attend with visible and happy effects. . .we think we can see that ‘goodtime coming' very near at had." [121] The bountiful harvest of 1860 "will long be remembered as a very propitious and fruitful season, " the Messenger boasted. While crop production was down further south in the state due to drought, the "one great feature of the soil and climate of our favored Minnesota, is the great certainty of producing a good crop every year. There has not been a general failure of any crop since the first settlement of the country." [122]

In many respects, however, wheat production was a symptom of the poverty of frontier life because of its ability to command cash with minimal investment in labor, time, and material. While older settlements in Wisconsin had already experienced the consequences of wheat specialization in soil exhaustion and lower yields, few people in the St. Croix Valley paid any heed. So many were recent immigrants with little means and who did not have the luxury to contemplate the future. They had to survive in the present, even if that meant compromising the fertility of the soil and their future profitability. Many migrants had left eastern states because of soil exhaustion and were, therefore, in the habit of moving on rather than learn to diversify. [123]

Some farmers in the central part of the state went from producing twenty to twenty-five bushels of wheat per acre to only five or six bushels just a few years later. In addition, in some years limited snowfall in the winter left soil moisture so low that it led to crop failures in the early 1850s. These crop failures prompted an agricultural reform movement in the state capitol of Madison. In 1851, legislators and interested citizens organized a state agricultural society and sponsored the first state fair and cattle show that fall in Janesville. The society also encouraged the formation of county level societies. Through state and county fairs, agricultural reformers hoped their exhibits and demonstrations would educate farmers to more scientific farming practices, such as crop rotation and diversification, use of fertilizers, stockbreeding, animal shelters, raising hogs and sheep, the best grasses for hay, and producing butter and cheese that was palatable and saleable. [124]

Several counties in the valley did recognize the need for agricultural societies to begin educating farmers in better farming practices. St. Croix County organized a society in 1857 and Pierce County followed suit in 1859. In 1855, the first annual fair of the Minnesota Territorial Agricultural Society met in Minneapolis. Washington County made a showing of their agricultural wealth at the fair. [125] Although it attempted to form a county agricultural society in 1856, it never succeeded. While farming had taken strong root in the delta region and Stillwater certainly had organizational experience, organized farming was not a priority before the panic of 1857. It was not until 1871 that Washington County finally formed an agricultural society. [126] Minnesota newspapers, however, tried to fill in the gap by printing reports of successful crops. "Onions are among the vegetables which luxuriate in our soil," proclaimed the Messenger, "Several specimens measured 13-1/2 inches in circumference." As to potatoes, "Minnesota produces this vegetable in perfection." Tomatoes here grew "in greatest abundance," some even weighing "a trifle of two pounds." [127] The exorbitant price of fruit brought up from Illinois prompted the local newspapers to encourage farmers to take up fruit growing. [128] "That several excellent and healthy fruits can be raised here, we have not a particle of doubt," chided the St. Croix Union, "we do therefore trust that our farmers will set out more fruit trees upon their premises. It is a duty they owe, not only to themselves and family, but to posterity." The paper ran subsequent articles on how to plant an orchard properly. [129] By 1861, the Minnesota Commissioner of Statistics put out a circular asking farmers, threshers, and town and county officers to compile information on the yields of wheat, corn, oats, barley, and potatoes as well as any damage to crops by pests and weather conditions. [130]

The Civil War Years in the St. Croix Valley

Before the St. Croix Valley could enjoy the peace and prosperity of the wheat boom or consider its future consequences, sectional issues between North and South brought on the Civil War. Tensions between the Democratic and Republican parties pivoted around the issue of slavery. But many other issues, seemingly on the surface unrelated to slavery, were tied to sectional party concerns and affected this remote frontier. Southern Democrats feared that if slaves were not allowed in the territories and newly formed states in the West, slaves states would be outnumbered in Congress. Northern and western free states then would eventually outlaw the South's "peculiar institution." Wisconsin and the St. Croix Valley had undergone a political metamorphosis in the decade leading up to the Civil War. Many people who first settled in the state and in the valley were independent and self-reliant pioneers, who espoused the Democratic principles of Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson of close, local government, and economic and cultural laissez-faire. The Democratic Party dominated the state when Wisconsin joined the Union in 1848. The Whigs, however, played an influential roll in the state. They generally represented New England transplants with connections to eastern capitalists interested in investments and internal improvements to develop the state's resources. In the presidential elections of 1848 and 1852, the Democrats carried the state with fifty-nine percent of the vote with sixty percent of St. Croix County voters supporting Democratic candidates. However, underneath the apparent strong support for the Democratic Party the political tides of the country, the state, and St. Croix County were shifting. The slavery issue gradually eroded Democrat support in the North as the party became identified with southern slaveholders.

The Whigs, too, faced competition from other political factions. It carried the stigma of being the party of the rich and it offended many immigrants and Catholics by its identifying Americanism with Anglo-Protestantism and by their temperance crusades. Both the Democrats and Whigs, however, lost supporters to the anti-slavery Liberty Party that aimed to keep slavery out of the western states and territories under the banner of "Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men." As a minority party the Whigs moved to form a coalition with the Free Soil party. In 1854, Senator Stephen Douglas of Illinois introduced in Congress a bill that would repeal the Missouri Compromise of 1820 that prohibited slavery in the old Louisiana Territory by allowing settlers there to determine whether slaves would be permitted or not. Douglas's objective was to win southern support for a railroad bill to go through Illinois westward. He assumed the environment would not be conducive to a slave-driven agriculture anyway so the bill should not threaten northerners. He was, however, wrong.

In response to this new political situation, Wisconsinites of all political stripes, who at one time simply dismissed slavery as a regional issue, met in Ripon, Wisconsin and formed the Republican Party. Although former Whigs dominated the party, they minimized their former anti-immigrant and temperance crusades. Enough disaffected Democrats and Free Soilers felt they found a viable alternative to the "conspiratorial slave-power" Democrats and joined the new party. As other sectional issues continued to threaten national politics, more and more Wisconsinites and residents of St. Croix County moved into the Republican camp. By the 1856 presidential election, most Wisconsin counties voted Republican, including Pierce, St. Croix, and Polk Counties. The only holdouts for the Democrats were Irish and German Catholics, and other non-English-speaking immigrants with the exception of Scandinavians. While Democratic James Buchanan won the presidency, the Republicans had assumed dominance in state politics. [131]

It was against this political backdrop that the Whig/Republican Stillwater Messenger and the Democratic St. Croix Union of Stillwater fought their respective local battles. These national issues also crystallized the values of St. Croix Valley residents. Since most had been originally Democrats, abolitionism was not a pressing issue. But when the free labor principles of the old Northwest Ordinance seemed to be in jeopardy from the Democratic Party, these rugged pioneers switched to the political party that promised to safeguard their homesteads and independent labor–the Republican Party. When war broke out between the North and the South in April 1861, however, there was not an enthusiastic response to the first call to arms in Wisconsin. Anglo-American Protestants were the first to heed the call. Foreign-born immigrants were reluctant to commit themselves to the cause of the North. German and Irish Catholics had trouble forgetting the nativist sentiment among many Republicans and would not put their lives on the line for a country whose host population disdained them. While many ethnic groups did not want to see slavery spread, few cared about the abolitionist cause. Given its high immigrant population, Wisconsin did not contribute as many men to the Union in proportion to its population as Illinois, Michigan, Indiana, Ohio, Minnesota, and Iowa. [132]

While statistics for the Wisconsin side of the St. Croix are not readily available, Washington County in Minnesota took great pride in its wartime contribution. "Every citizen of Washington county should feel proud of her war record," wrote the Republican Messenger. "Compared with other counties, she is not behind any in patriotism: while she distances nearly every other, in proportion to population, in the number of troops furnished for suppressing the rebellion." Of its total population of 6770, there were 980 men who fought for the Union. The Messenger pointed out that this figure did not include the number of men who were enticed into Wisconsin regiments where they could receive generous bounties. These bounties were attractive to pioneers as a means to get out of debt or purchase a farm. [133]

On the home front the war brought prosperity to the North. By 1863, Wisconsin farmers enjoyed a boom like they never had before. Wheat and other agricultural products were in great demand, and Wisconsin and Minnesota's rich, virgin soil allowed their farmers to cash in. Wartime profits and the shortage of men stimulated the mechanization of farming. A mechanical reaper could replace four to six men in the field. While reapers were fairly common throughout most of Wisconsin before the war, St. Croix pioneers could now afford them. Threshing machines had been rare in the state before 1860, but increasingly more and more farmers began using them. [134]

These labor saving devices, however, also had the effect of spreading the wheat growing mania. Since wheat was already easy to cultivate, labor saving machinery made it possible for one farmer to bring even more land under wheat cultivation, and labor scarcity diminished the possibility of turning to more labor-intensive crops that required more vigilant hoeing and tending. Proximity to the St. Croix River also kept farmers in the valley tilling wheat since this gave them access to national markets. While most farmers throughout the state were reluctant to give up on wheat, the 1860s witnessed the shift to cultivation of other crops and stock raising in some farming communities in Wisconsin because of problems of delivering the goods to market. [135]

As early as August 1861 the Messenger was able to remark about the countryside, "four years ago, but one farm had been opened. . .Now scores of them, in a high state of cultivation, are to be seen, where then was either unbroken prairie or forest." The rattle and clatter of reapers made "merry music" as they harvested the "golden sheaves" of wheat. "The farmers of Minnesota have abundant reasons to rejoice," exclaimed the Stillwater newspaper. "Far removed from the desolating track of war, and with the granaries filled to overflowing, they have great cause for the most profound gratitude." [136] The wheat bonanza was added proof that farming in Minnesota was not only possible but also profitable. In 1861, wheat sold for about fifty cents a bushel. By 1866, it fetched more than $1.50. The Messenger published an example of wheat fields turning into gold. "In 1863, J.W. Treager purchased thirteen hundred acres of unimproved land in Washington County, Minn., for which he paid $10,000," the paper wrote. "In the summer of 1863 he broke seventy-acres, upon which he raised a crop in 1864. That crop was sold for sufficient to pay for the land upon which it was raised, for breaking and fencing it, and all the expense of raising, harvesting and marketing the crop, and $1,100 besides." [137] Farmers in Washington County who reported wheat yields of twenty-four bushels per acre abundantly demonstrated the richness of the soil in the St. Croix Valley for growing wheat. [138] The war itself, of course, stimulated this demand for wheat. American farmers also benefited from the misfortunes of Europe stemming from the Crimean War. However, war also brought about inflation and farmers' expenses for new machinery and other goods also rose. Many farmers took on heavy debts to expand their operations. Thus their dependence upon wheat continued at the expense of diversification. [139]

Figure 28. Map showing the construction of railroads in Wisconsin by decades, 1850-1898. From Thompson, Wheat Growing in Wisconsin.

The Farming Frontier Moves Up the Valley

When the Civil War concluded in 1865, Wisconsin still had nearly ten to eleven million acres of unsold land, which amounted to approximately one-third of the entire state. Most of it was considered valuable for its timber rather than its suitability for farming. [140] In 1866 the federal land office opened up the last big tract of land in Wisconsin amounting to nearly 6.5 million acres. Most of it was located in the Chippewa pinery, but the upper St. Croix also went up for sale. When the land was put up for sale, 7.5 million acres in agricultural scrip had been sold. The holders of this scrip came from all over the country, and most buyers bought tracts of land of at least eight hundred acres. Caleb Cushing, the persona non grata of St. Croix Falls, made the largest purchase of 33,000 acres in Polk County. In 1868, Cushing had helped organize the Great European American Emigration Land Company and served as its president. [141] This company was incorporated in New York State with a million dollars of capital from investors in New York, Georgia, Wisconsin, and six other states. Its headquarters was in New York City with branch offices in Stockholm, Hamburg, and Liverpool. Its purpose was, of course, to recruit immigrants directly to their land, not state-held land.

Unfortunately, Cushing's big schemes did not always work out because he often selected incompetent or unscrupulous agents to execute his plans. The general manager of the Emigration Company, Henning A. Taube of Stockholm -- or Count Taube as he was known in the valley, was of the unscrupulous sort. The Stockholm office provided an elaborate prospectus on how to reach St. Croix Falls, the cost of getting there, employment prospects in logging, and the opportunity to buy good farm lands from the company. The first group of 125 Swedes reached the St. Croix in early summer 1869. However, land was not available for purchase until October. Taube then advised Cushing that it would be better to sell title to the land before the immigrants arrived. Count Taube, however, was extravagant and reckless in his use of company money and promises made to emigrants. When colonists found they could not exchange certificates they bought back in Sweden and Prussia for land in the St. Croix, Taube simply referred them to Cushing. Cushing honored the certificates and refunded the settlers' money. They all found land outside St. Croix Falls. Cushing, however, resigned as president and trustee of the Company. All the other trustees did as well and the Great Emigration Company became defunct. [142]

Cushing, however, still owned land in Polk County and, undaunted by his previous failures, continued to buy more. By 1875, he owned 45,000 acres in the county, and he finally found a reliable agent in J. Stannard Baker. Baker took control of the Cushing's Land Agency in 1874 and quickly turned the enterprise around. "His appearance," wrote Alice Smith, "marked the end of thirty years of mismanagement resulting from absentee landlordism, controversial claims, lack of policy, and negligence." Baker put an end to trespassing on Cushing's land for logging, wild hay harvesting, and cranberry picking, and kept Cushing's tax rate low. His agricultural lands, sold to both lumbermen and farmers, finally began to produce a return after thirty-three years of investment. Cushing eventually sold the rest of his land to William J. Star of Eau Claire. These heavily timbered lands were logged off and eventually became farms. [143]

Although Cushing's Emigration Company folded, newspaper articles in Madison lured a colony of Danes to his lands near the town of Luck. West Denmark, as the settlement was called, stretched over three townships. "These hardy Scandinavians were very thrifty and industrious," Harry Baker commented. Their only goal was "to get homes and [were] willing to go into the wilderness and cut down the heavy hardwood timber and build their log houses and clear small patches of land from which to raise crops for the necessities of life. . .They . . .were a wonderful asset in the development of this heavy hardwood timbered country." [144] Like the pioneers of the Chisago Lakes area, Polk County settlers faced the arduous task of clearing the land if they did not buy it from a lumber company who had already logged it. They were far from the St. Croix River, which limited their opportunities to join in the export of agricultural products and isolated their communities until the railroads came through. The virgin soil had the characteristics of the northern end of the tension zone. It was mostly black loam with a subsoil of clay or gravel. While it produced good crops for small grain, vegetables, hay, and corn, farmers found it unreliable. They became dairy farmers much sooner than other settlers further south and claimed to have established the first cooperative creamery in the state of Wisconsin. [145]

In the post-war years the average settler to the frontier and the St. Croix Valley faced stiffer competition for land. While land was still available through the public land office under the Homestead Act or even pre-emption claims, most of the best land went into the hands of speculators. Farmers, however, had to pay more for this land up front. Homestead land not only had the ten-dollar fee and no title to it for five year, but it also might have wet lands that needed to be drained, poorer soil, or it might be off the beaten path with little access to markets before railroads and graded roads were built. If they were lucky, some newcomers were able to purchase farms that were already developed by a previous owner.

However they were able to obtain land, the St. Croix Valley continued to attract settlers and immigrants. Between 1865 and 1873, newcomers to Wisconsin arrived and followed the paths of settlement that were laid out by the first wave of settlers. Virtually the same ethnic groups continued to migrate to the state. The difference in settlement from the antebellum years was that large tracts of public lands were often bought up before anyone took up residence. These newcomers were also not solely dependent upon the waterways to reach their destinations. They were assisted by the growth of railroads that penetrated further north. By 1870, the population of Wisconsin increased to over a million inhabitants, and it kept its status of having one of the largest immigrant and foreign-born populations in the country. [146]

With the anti-immigrant, Know Nothing years behind it, Wisconsin renewed its efforts to recruit foreign emigrants. In 1867, Wisconsin established another board of immigration, this time, however, the commissioners received no pay. Its main strategy was to distribute a thirty two-page pamphlet written by Increase A. Lapham that described every facet of the state from its location, resources, educational institutions, churches, its system of government, the rights of citizens, the Homestead Law, and routes to the state. The cheapness of land in Wisconsin relative to other areas was particularly stressed. Besides its English version, this pamphlet was translated into German, French, Welsh, Swedish, Norwegian, and Dutch. The governor appointed a three-person committee in each county to compile a list of names of family and friends in the old country to mail the pamphlet to. The state of Wisconsin, thereby, institutionalized the pattern of chain migration that had begun in the 1850s. Pierce, St. Croix, and Polk Counties continued to attract the Irish, the Swedes and Norwegians, some Germans and English, and a few Danes, along with the native-born Americans from eastern states. [147]

When complaints arose that the immigration commission's budget and reach was too limited, the Wisconsin legislature passed an act in 1871 that created an elective commission with a full-time office in Milwaukee and a part-time agent in Chicago. The first elected commissioner, the Norwegian-born Ole C. Johnson, distributed the pamphlet more widely sending them directly to government and emigration agencies in Europe, such as England, Germany, Belgium, Denmark, and Norway. Johnson also provided the extra perk of free travel for women, children, and elderly men on the Milwaukee and St. Paul Railroad to their Wisconsin destinations if they were unable to continue once they arrived in Wisconsin. [148]

Minnesota did not stand idly by in the recruitment of immigrants. In 1867, the state established its own Board of Immigration. Its secretary was Hans Mattson, a Swedish immigrant and pioneer. He also served as a land agent for the St. Paul and Pacific Railroad. Mattson took a journey himself to his homeland to recruit prospective settlers for the Minnesota frontier. "He was a modern Marco Polo returning from fabulous lands beyond known horizons," wrote historian Theodore Blegen, "and he never ceased to describe his chosen state as a land of milk and honey." Minnesota's Immigration Board also sent out pamphlets in Norwegian, Swedish, German, Welsh, and English along with other recruiting agents back east and to Europe. Railroads, who stood to benefit from increased population, provided cheap fares for immigrant families, and provided temporary shelter for them when they arrived. Ever sensitive to its reputation for cold weather, Minnesota made more exaggerated claims of its health benefits for ailments such as ague and consumption than it had in the 1850s and minimized other sicknesses common on the frontier, such as diphtheria and typhus. [149] This strategy worked well. In 1879, the Rush City Post wrote, the night train brought in nearly "three-hundred Swedes who were on the way to locate in this and Burnett counties. . .Mr. [Charles] Anderson went over to Sweden sometime early in the spring for the purpose of bringing over a ship load and he succeeded well." These Swedish immigrants made an enthusiastic impression on the Post. "A better more healthy and well dressed lot of foreigners never landed in Rush City before. . .They make the best of citizens." [150]

By 1870, the wheat frontier began to shift further from eastern to western states with St. Croix farmers in the middle of this agricultural transition. In most of Wisconsin wheat production began to decline while Minnesota experienced its wheat boom. This shift occurred because of soil exhaustion and over-specialization in one crop also encouraged the proliferation of pests and blight. In the 1860s and 1870s, the southern half of Wisconsin battled cinch bugs and rust in addition to the usual cycles of drought that caused unpredictable yields of wheat. Railroad transportation moved into the central portion of the state that had hitherto been remote from water transportation and national and even international markets. Railroad building had also extended further west into the prairies and plains of Minnesota, the Dakotas, Iowa, Kansas, and Nebraska, which increased competition in agricultural production. While Wisconsin on the whole produced respectable crops of wheat, individual farmers could not match the yields per acre coming out of the fresh, virgin soils to the west. Many farmers in the southern and central sections of the state finally began to heed the advice coming from the University of Wisconsin's Agricultural School to diversify. [151]

The St. Croix Valley, however, continued to experience a wheat boom. In 1876, Stillwater boasted that it "ranks next to any market in the State — Minneapolis being first." [152] The town had a right to boast its importance to agriculture in the region. In 1875, its Seymour, Sabin Company began manufacturing a thresher called the "Minnesota Chief." [153]

Railroads: Regional Rivalry and Growth

In the post-Civil War period railroads became the main avenues for a vast expansion of opportunity for entrepreneurs, businessmen, and farmers. It was clear by the 1870s that the waterways had reached their limit for development. The Upper Mississippi River was not always navigable around the Rock Island rapids. Its tributaries in Wisconsin were also undependable. The Wisconsin River had constantly shifting shallows. Logs and lumber rafts choked the St. Croix and other rivers limiting navigation up or down river for others. In an era of horse or oxen drawn vehicles, public roads were not a viable access to a national or even international market. The railroads represented the most modern and efficient mode of transportation. [154]

Between 1868 and 1873, railroad construction in Wisconsin and Minnesota boomed. Before the war the main thrust of building rail lines was from Lake Michigan to the Mississippi River. In the postwar period the goal was to penetrate into the northern frontier. The coming of the railroad was the next critical development needed to advance settlement, logging, and agriculture along the river. The railroad released the St. Croix Valley from its dependency upon the river for its sole source of transportation. The log-choked river often times hindered access up and down the river, and when it froze in the winter, the valley was isolated for months from the outside world. [155]

In 1856 and 1864, Congress had set aside nearly four million acres of the public domain in Wisconsin for railroad construction. The railroad companies that were granted land under the 1856 act had abandoned projects after the Panic of 1857 and much of the land was forfeited. In the 1864 Railroad Act Congress renewed and enlarged the land grants. One of the three grants was for a northwest route from the St. Croix River or St. Croix Lake to Bayfield on Lake Superior. Another route was to connect the St. Croix to Tomah approximately forty miles east of La Crosse. The third was to take a north central route. Congress had stipulated that the first two railroads must be completed in five years and the last within ten years. By 1869, however, the St. Croix and Lake Superior Railroad Company had not laid any track along its proposed route from Hudson to Bayfield. It, thereby, forfeited all of its claims. Congress proceeded to select the North Wisconsin Railway Company to build the line with the assumption that the same land would be granted to it. However, once the issue was reopened in Congress, Minnesota and Wisconsin citizens fought over the route to Lake Superior. Once again the old decision to divide the state of Wisconsin from Minnesota at the St. Croix turned the respective sides into competitors rather than cooperators. [156]

Citizens of Minnesota had envisioned a railroad route from St. Paul to Duluth that would give the Twin Cities access to Great Lakes shipping without having to pass through Wisconsin or Illinois. During the Civil War Minnesota Governor Alexander Ramsey argued the line was essential to national defense. A line to the North Country where the lumber industry was expanding was also no small incentive to Minnesota to get the line on their side of the St. Croix. In 1864, Congress had passed the Lake Superior and Mississippi Railroad grant, and the Minnesota legislature allocated the remaining land necessary. The line, however, was not immediately built. When the St. Croix and Lake Superior Railroad Company folded and the grant dispute reached Congress, Minnesotans rallied to defeat the plans for a rival railroad in Wisconsin. The people of Duluth were adamantly opposed to Bayfield becoming a rival port and railroad terminus. They argued before Congress that they had a better harbor than Bayfield, and the surrounding area around Duluth was better suited for a larger city. The Minnesota contingent also enlisted the support of Jay Cooke, the leading investment banker of Philadelphia. Cooke had an interest in the Minnesota line, but he also had some controlling influence over the North Wisconsin. Although he was supposed to represent both companies equally, he used his influence to favor the Minnesota line. The North Wisconsin Company had only been able to lay seventeen miles of track northeast of Hudson in four years before Congress discontinued its grant. By 1871, however, the Lake Superior and Mississippi Railroad opened for business. Duluth became the third largest city in Minnesota behind the Twin Cities and the reigning city on Lake Superior, not Bayfield, Wisconsin. The development of the Upper St. Croix north of St. Croix Falls was put on hold. [157]

As the Twin Cities became the dominant metropolis in the North Country, much of the thrust of national railroad building was to the west of the St. Croix. In 1867, Chicago and Milwaukee interests purchased the Minnesota Central and built a connecting line from McGregor, Iowa, linking St. Paul with Chicago. Another railroad line was constructed in 1871 on the Minnesota side of the Mississippi from St. Paul to Winona and then down to Hastings, which was across the river from La Crosse where there were connections to Milwaukee. With these connections northern Minnesota was the obvious starting point for the Northern Pacific route of the Transcontinental Railroad built in the 1870s. [158]

Stillwater, however, now a city of seven thousand, was not about to be bypassed by these transportation developments. In 1867, many prominent men of Stillwater, Taylors Falls, Marine, and Baytown organized the Stillwater and St. Paul Railroad. Within a few years they had raised enough capital to begin building. By December 1870, the line was completed. Stillwater's economy boomed as a result of this connection and settlers were lured to the area by the 63,850 acres of government land grants available for sale. By 1878 the Stillwater & St. Paul line became part of the Northern Pacific Transcontinental system. [159] Since it was at the head of deep-water navigation on the Mississippi and it had rail access to the Twin Cities, Stillwater fully expected to "be more than ever a prominent wheat market. . .This city is the only point favorable for the transshipment by rail to Lake Superior at Duluth, of the large quantities of wheat that are already coming from several hundred miles down the river to take this route to the East." [160]

Railroad building in northern Wisconsin suffered from Minnesota's transportation expansion and from its restrictive constitution that prohibited public funds for internal improvements. Investors in northern Wisconsin were only interested in timber. Most farmers preferred prairie land, or at least wooded areas with oak openings to the dense forests of the North Country — at least until they were cleared. Railroads had a tough time raising capital to build lines in northern Wisconsin. Land-grant railroad companies had to build the line first before they got title to the land. Therefore, financing for railroads in the north woods was difficult to obtain. In 1868 and 1869, railroad lobbyists tried to get a constitutional amendment passed that would allow the state to give financial support for railroad construction. However, the more populous southern counties who already had access to railroads defeated it. Local railroad promoters also had bad luck with eastern capitalists who preferred to invest in the less risky consolidation of railroads and the more profitable business of monopoly building than in new construction into Wisconsin's deep woods frontier. [161] Nonetheless, the West Wisconsin Railway reached Hudson by 1873, where a bridge was built across the St. Croix to the Minnesota side. [162] Mail delivery, however, could not depend upon railroads. In 1876, a mail route was established from Marine Mills across the St. Croix by ferry to Farmington, Wisconsin and then northward to Osceola and St. Croix Falls. [163]

It would take a great deal of maneuvering to get a railroad built in the St. Croix Valley north from Hudson to Lake Superior. Once railroad monopolies had solidified their interests in the state, they showed little interest in penetrating into the densely wooded, sparsely populated northwest. While lumber companies in northwest Wisconsin began to show some interest in extending railroads further into the north woods by the late 1860s, they found they had little influence in Madison and on railroad companies. Since no money was forthcoming from the state, local counties were often forced to put up bonds to finance the venture. Since the northern St. Croix River Valley was so sparsely populated, timber and sawmill owners feared it would be their property pledged to finance the bonds. While railroad transport could facilitate timber extraction, the lumber companies were still able to make use of the superb waterways well into the 1870s and 1880s. Absentee timber owners and the more mobile lumbermen had a difficult time turning out enough votes to defeat railroad promoters and developers in the towns and villages who planned to finance their ventures at the expense of the lumber interests. Even if the lumber companies managed to defeat railroad bonds at the county level, railroad lobbyist generally found a sympathetic ear in Madison to outmaneuver the lumbermen. While the Wisconsin legislature could not grant money, it could carve out another county to eliminate the resisting timber factions on the frontier fringe. Northern Wisconsin's counties above an east-west line from Marinette on Lake Michigan to New Richmond on the west were all created with less than five thousand people by 1880. Burnett County had been set off from Polk County in 1856, but was not organized until 1865. Bayfield County was created in 1868. [164]

By 1873, the Northern Wisconsin Railroad Company won the right to build a line from Hudson to Lake Superior. The West Wisconsin line, however, also coveted the route and ensured that the legislature put so many conditions on it that Alexander Mitchell, the president of the Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul [which owned the NWR] and Milwaukee banker, rejected it. Before the West Wisconsin could celebrate its coup, the Panic of 1873 and the ensuing depression of the seventies put an end to the railroad boom. The St. Croix to Bayfield line, which started in Hudson and split at Spooner with a branch going to Superior and another headed to Bayfield, was not completed until 1883. Construction of this line to Superior, of course, required a bridge to cross the Namekagon River at Trego. The line was eventually brought into the Chicago and Northwestern system. [165]

Since the St. Croix railroad line skirted the eastern side of the valley, many towns along the river complained they were left out of the new prosperity that was developing in the railroad towns eastward. "We are shut out from the world of travel and business, by not being on the line of an important railroad," lamented the Polk County Press. "Our river is of great benefit to us, but that serves us not more than one half of the year, and some years not as much as that, -- especially when the logs blockade us for two months of the best part of the season." [166] The St. Croix River, which had been so essential to the development of the region, limited the development of the valley's full potential. The key to agricultural and related economic development was access to a railroad. So despite the linkage of the St. Croix River at Hudson to Lake Superior, many towns further up river were convinced more railroads were needed. In 1884, the Polk County Press asked, "Will a Railroad Pay?" Its answer was definitively "yes." The paper pointed out that two-thirds of the wheat produced in the county was hauled to Stillwater because farmers could get a better price there. "Why? Because in Stillwater there is a competition in the market, more buyers and a higher price is paid." The reason for more buyers was because "the town had the shipping facilities of three railroads, and will soon have a fourth or fifth. These facilities give that city mills to grind the wheat, and a demand for it...With a railroad there would be a demand for Osceola wheat in Stillwater, St. Paul and Minneapolis." Osceola's mills would expand and farmers could get the same price for it in town as they would in hauling it the nearly twenty miles to Stillwater. [167]

In the early 1880s a new era of cooperation in railroad building began between Minnesota and Wisconsin. The Lake Superior and Mississippi Railroad, which ran from St. Paul to Duluth and skirted the western edge of the St. Croix River Valley, did not fulfill all expectations. The Port of Duluth did not readily give the Twin Cities the access to national markets. In winter ice hampered lake traffic out of Duluth to eastern markets. There were also complaints that subsequent summer freight rates were too high, having to make up for winter losses. By the 1880s the Twin Cities had become a major milling center with enough economic and political clout to consider running a line from Minneapolis-St. Paul across northern Wisconsin and Michigan's Upper Peninsula to Sault Ste. Marie — the entrepot between Lake Superior and Lake Huron, as well as the proposed terminus for a Michigan railroad. "It is imperative to all our interests," wrote the Minneapolis Journal, "that a railroad system be constructed which will place us at least on an equality, both summer and winter, with all other shipping points in this vast region." [168]

This proposal created great excitement in the St. Croix Valley and was closely followed in the newspapers of the St. Croix. "It will be an entirely new road, crossing the river somewhere between Stillwater and St. Croix Falls," the Polk County Press enthusiastically exclaimed. [169] Wisconsin was, of course, eager to have the line built since it would travel through the heart of its hard and softwood northern forests, as well as penetrate into its iron regions. However, financing the road through Wisconsin was fraught with the usual fiscal problems and local aid was needed. The Polk County Press was undaunted by this prospect and encouraged its readers to support the project which was expected to come down the Apple River, then cross the St. Croix River, and proceed down to Stillwater. "This great public improvement presents itself in close relationship to the people of Polk County," the paper wrote. "It is proposed by its incorporators to cross the territory of this county, and our people, if they are true now to their own interests, will give the matter close and careful consideration. . .They propose to develop this section with a great trunk railroad: they will ask in return but a small amount of assistance from us, when compared to the benefits the road will bring to us." [170] The Press proved prophetic as the line was determined to go from the head of Osceola prairie into Osceola itself with a branch line up to St. Croix Falls. From there it was to run down river to the mouth of the Apple River where it was to cross the St. Croix and proceed to Stillwater. [171]

By 1886, work began on the Soo Line as the Minneapolis–Sault Ste. Marie Line was known. By January of 1887, the line had reached Franconia bringing with it a real estate boom. By February it was Osceola's turn. "The coming of the railroad has nearly doubled the price of land," rejoiced the Polk County Press, "and those who wish to buy should do so soon, as property in Polk county will never be worth less than it is to-day." [172] By August Osceola rejoiced with the completion of the railroad. "We are in the world," proclaimed the Polk County Press. "Connected with business and commercial life." After thirty-five to forty years of waiting for a railroad, the people of Osceola were giddy with excitement. Their winter hibernations were over as was their exclusion from growing national market both as sellers and consumers. "Old men and old women leaped for joy; young men and maidens gaily tripped the streets," an observer noted when the track was completed. "Everybody was happy. . .even the sick smiled, and those who did not smile must have been nearly dead." [173] The arrival of the railroad to Osceola brought with it the building of a "fine new depot" and a thirty-foot high water tower as well as a new grain elevator and warehouse in anticipation of bountiful harvests of wheat grown on the prairies of Osceola. [174] With the arrival of the Soo Line, mail delivery shifted to the railroad and the mail route from Marine Mills via ferry to Wisconsin was discontinued in 1887. Residents were please by the greater dependability of mail delivery from the iron horse rather than boats on the river. [175]

From Wheat to Dairy

This transportation revolution stimulated the slow, costly, and difficult transition among Polk County farmers to join the rest of the state in its shift from wheat growing to dairying. Despite the assumption that wheat production would continue to expand with the arrival of the railroad, this quicker more efficient form of transportation made it possible for farmers to break their reliance on wheat. Astute farmers found they could now ship fresh dairy and animal products to urban areas. Dairy farming would eventually prove to be a more reliable source of income for farmers, and it would relieve the ecological problems associated with single-crop production. Farmers' lives were also transformed. Equipped with extra cash and cheaper transportation they had access to the growing consumer economy that had developed in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century through catalogues, cheaper, regular mail service, and the possibility of train trips to the city for shopping and entertainment. [176]

The switch to dairying, however, did not occur overnight. The arrival of the railroad throughout most of Wisconsin coincided with the growth of warning signs that wheat production was waning in southern Wisconsin. This was in part due to the declining fertility of the soil and to the plague of cinch bugs. The price of wheat had also declined after the Civil War with decreased demand and more land further west being brought into cultivation. While dairy farms began appearing in southern Wisconsin, counties further north and along the state's rivers showed no concern for what would be come their future.

In 1860, St. Croix County led the state in wheat yields, with Buffalo and Trempealeau Counties south on the Mississippi following closely behind. Pierce County had also emerged as a significant wheat-producing region. St. Croix County reported almost no livestock in the county save for draft horses. Oats were still cultivated, but even potato production was down, as were the number of swine along the St. Croix, all this to make way for wheat. While other river counties began showing some interest in raising sheep, St. Croix and Polk counties displayed no interest in these woolly creatures despite the cold winters. In 1868 the State Agricultural Society lamented in its Transactions that wheat was still the most highly valued crop in Wisconsin. [177]

The reluctance to give up on wheat along the St. Croix was in part because virgin land was still being brought into cultivation in the 1860s and 70s, and the decline in soil fertility was not rampant. Between 1870 and 1890, the ten-county stretch of land from La Crosse to St. Croix County gave the state a twenty-five percent increase in farm acreage in Wisconsin. Burnett County also joined the ranks of wheat producing counties in the state. The land values in this region went up with railroad service, but so too did taxes. Farmers, therefore, needed to make more money to pay their property rates. Hence, they relied on wheat as long as they could. [178]

The wheat-growing era in the St. Croix Valley, however, had its limits. Agricultural prices in general began to decline in the 1870s and into the 1880s. For farmers to keep up they had to expand their operations. While sowing wheat and watching it grow was relatively easy, harvesting it was a problem. Ripe wheat was easily damaged by heat, wind, hail, and pounding rain and had to be harvested quickly. Horse-drawn reapers and binders were essential. While mechanical farming equipment worked well in the prairie lands of the valley, the hillier terrain in the old forests was less accommodating to machines. In addition, the new roller-mills that began to dominate in the milling centers in the Twin Cities preferred hard spring wheat varieties rather than softer winter wheat. Spring wheat, however, was more susceptible to disease and forced many farmers to rethink their approach to farming. [179]

By the 1880s, most of southern Wisconsin had converted to dairy farming. This transition was slow and halting and had taken over twenty years for most farmers to admit that dairying was the best means of survival. They did not come to it directly from wheat growing either. Many had tried their hand at hops, flax, sugar beets, sorghum, and even tobacco, but these could be grown better and cheaper elsewhere. Sheep raising was a more viable alternative, and wool prices fetched a nice profit during the war. Wool prices dropped after the war and stayed low. However, many farmers whose soil was exhausted by wheat felt they had little choice but to stick with sheep. Sheep farming allowed them to restore their land with rich natural grasses and begin crop rotation while still offering some income to the farmer. Sheep herding was easy compared to taking care of dairy cows or other stock. Wool did not perish like the by-products of milk, and sheep required less winterfeed than cattle. Few Wisconsinites believed corn would flourish in their climate, which thereby restricted them from turning to more lucrative hog farming. Sheep-raising was the "first major adjustment toward a more balanced farm management," wrote historian Eric E. Lampard. "It was. . .the most economical retreat from wheat growing and the cheapest alternative to ‘high farming.'" [180]

It was the knowledge, experience, and enthusiasm of migrant New Yorkers that ushered in the dairy industry in Wisconsin. Earlier in the century New York had undergone the same crisis in farming. When wheat farming had exhausted the soils in the Empire State, farmers were forced to search for alternative means of support. By 1860, New York dairy farmers had successfully made the transition to dairy products. To sell broadly farmers found they had to improve the quality and quantity of their cheese and butter. Traditionally, cheese and butter making had been in the province of the over-worked farm wife primarily for household consumption. Whatever surplus she may have produced, was sold locally. Some farm wives had better reputations than others for the quality of their final product. New York dairy associations began to insist on more sanitary processing, better salt, truth in fat content, and improved packaging. By 1851, the industrial revolution reached the dairy farm, and the domestic system was moved to the factory. Within a decade the commercial dairy industry arrived. Consistency in quality, improved packaging, and an increase in quantity created a national and even international market for New York dairy products. [181]

By the time Wisconsin's wheat era had played out in the 1870s, the New York dairy industry was a well-developed model for other regions in the country to emulate. Many a New York dairy farm boy migrated to Wisconsin, attracted by the relative cheapness of the land as well as lower feeding costs and cheaper farm labor. Many became leaders in transforming it into the "Dairy State." New Yorkers usually took the lead in local areas of Wisconsin in building cheese factories, in organizing breeder association, and in uniting the efforts of the state's dairy farmers. In 1872, they helped found the Wisconsin Dairymen's Association. Many of its presidents and executive officers hailed from the Empire State and contributed much needed expertise to the fledgling organization. Through dairy manuals, articles in local newspapers, and public meetings, farmers' apprehensions of the factory system were assuaged. It was hard to argue with the fact that factory produced cheese was of a consistently higher quality than any produced at home. Many a farm wife was no doubt eager to be emancipated from the time-consuming drudgery of home manufacturing of cheese and butter. Factories also could buy supplies in bulk at cheaper costs, and farmers happily turned over the marketing of their product to someone else. The main challenge was getting the milk to the factory before it spoiled. The neglected state and county road system and the vagaries of Wisconsin weather discouraged many farmers from participating in the factory system, but not necessarily in the viability of dairy farming. Farmers also wanted to retain rights to the whey produced from their milk for cattle and pig feed. Many issues needed to be resolved before dairying became widely accepted and practiced throughout the state. [182]

Wisconsinites were the fortunate beneficiaries of the Morrill Land Grant Law that helped establish the University of Wisconsin in Madison. Its College of Agriculture was created in 1866 after a farmers' convention, sponsored by the Wisconsin State Agricultural Society, put pressure on the state legislature to establish it in Madison. Scientific agriculture proved to be critical to the development of the dairy industry. Initially, it was difficult to find experienced faculty as well as to attract students out of the farming class. Therefore, in 1886, the College began short courses for farmers and in the following year began a winter Dairy School. It was the first of its kind in the country and trained and certified students in proper cheese and butter making. Within a few years it produced enough graduates to man the factories throughout the state. By working closely with farmers and factory workers, the faculty and researchers at the Wisconsin College of Agriculture were able to develop practical and scientifically sound knowledge for dairy farmers. Stephen Moulton Babcock, an agricultural chemist at the University of Wisconsin, devised a simple method for measuring the richness of milk. This produced experimentation with different feeding practices and the search for better milk producing cows. Other developments ranged from the inoculation of herds for diseases to the best pasteurizing methods. The College also initiated an extension division, published its research, and regularly hosted farmers' institutes. "Scientific men and practical farmers occupied the same platform," wrote historian Joseph Schafer, "with the result that science was more closely controlled by experience and experience definitely guided by science. No other feature in the history of agricultural advancement. . .had been so resultful (sic) in developing mutual respect and confidence between the farmer and the man of scientific learning." [183]

Minnesota also made its contribution to the field of dairy science. In 1878, the Minnesota Dairyman's Association was founded. The Minnesota Butter and Cheese Association followed in 1882. Oren C. Gregg, the superintendent of the University of Minnesota's Farmers' Institutes, is known as the "Father of Winter Dairying." He encouraged the breeding of cows that could calve in the fall. By having fall and spring births dairying could take place at a consistent year-round pace. In 1891, Theophilus L. Haecker joined the faculty at the University of Minnesota Agricultural School, and credited with nearly single-handedly placed Minnesota dairying on a scientific basis. He was responsible for determining the best diets for milk cows, developing judging standards for selection and breeding of cows, and he was the one who realized Holsteins were the most productive in this far north climate. Haecker was also responsible for promoting the idea of participant-owned businesses from creameries to elevator companies. The co-op movement succeeded beyond anyone's dreams. By 1921 the hundreds of co-ops that had developed joined together to form the Minnesota Cooperative Creameries Association. By 1924, they began marketing their products under the Land O Lakes label. Its immediate success prompted the company to use it as its official name in 1926. [184]

Throughout the 1870s the factory system gained more and more adherents in southern and southeastern Wisconsin. By following the New York model of the "associated dairy system," small farmers pooled their meager resources into viable milk production centers and got a higher return than they would have been able to do alone. By 1880, there were over four hundred cheese factories in the state, nearly a half million milk cows, and a growing number of creameries for butter making. The industrial revolution further advanced the dairy industry when mechanical refrigeration came into use in the 1890s. This made spoilage less of a problem. By the end of the century wheat growing had virtually disappeared in the southern half of the state, as dairy farming became the dominant form of agriculture. [185]

While this transformation was occurring in southern Wisconsin in the 1860s and 1870s, St. Croix River counties clung tenaciously to wheat. Even in 1885 Osceola bragged that its "wheat market is now as good as any in the valley." [186] However, by the 1880s, the valley could no longer avoid the problems associated with wheat farming. In 1879, St. Croix County held first place in wheat production in the state of Wisconsin. Ten years later it had dropped to forty-fifth place. Pierce County took tenth place — down from third, and Polk County fell to twenty-second place. This did not mean farmers immediately abandoned wheat growing. They instead sowed other grains, such as rye and barley, with their wheat. By 1899, St. Croix County had moved up to second place in wheat growing. Pierce and Polk counties held third and fifth place respectively. Most of the state had, however, shifted to dairy farming thereby reducing the competition. Yet, it demonstrates their reluctance to give up what was seen as an easy cash cow. St. Croix County even expanded its milling operations. [187]

Astute farmers, who realized wheat yields and profits would not continue, began to search for other alternatives. In the fall of 1883 State Senator James Hill, who represented Polk County, urged farmers who attended the Barron County Agricultural Fair to begin practicing crop rotation if they intend to continue raising wheat. Reliance on one crop was "ruinous to the success of any farmer, as it robs the soil of its plant food," Hill explained. "Worn out lands are brought into a higher state of cultivation by seeding to clover and ploughing it under." He also pointed out that the natural compliment of crop rotation was livestock farming. Cattle could graze in the clover fields and eat and rest in the hay as well as provide their own natural fertilizer to the fields. Root crops, such as turnips and potatoes, were also natural fertilizers in addition to providing nutritious slop for pigs. "The dairy business of the state has had a steady and rapid increase," Hill related, "and is fast taking its place among the leading agricultural products of the state. . .The profits of stock-raising and dairying are shown — first in the reclaiming worn-out grain farms to a productive and prosperous condition, -- second, substantial improvements made the [possible] advanced price of lands that follow dairy farming." [188]

The change to dairying in the St. Croix Valley was, however, a slow and difficult transition. It was expensive. It took time before clover thrived on exhausted soil. Since most farmers did not own stock, they had no manure. Therefore, many had to purchase commercial fertilizers before they could count on pasture grasses to do well and naturally fertilize the soil. Then they also had to buy milk cows. Gradually the number of cows increased through the 1890s, but there was no comparable increase in the growth of factories to process milk products. [189] The switch to dairying also affected the appearance of farms, particularly with the construction of silos. Feeding dairy cattle through the winter as well as extending lactation periods through good nutrition was another hurdle to overcome. European peasants had preserved food for animals by digging pits and burying it. From the mid-nineteenth century farmers in America began experimenting with constructed airtight storage containers, and it was discovered that winter frosts made above ground storage possible. By 1900, Wisconsin farmers had adopted four basic types of round silos constructed of wood, brick, stone, or cement. The foundation had to be strong and was usually dug four feet into the ground with a concrete floor with a two-foot deep stonewall reaching one to two feet above ground. Whatever materials they chose, farmers build the silo with two thicknesses of the chosen material with a dead air space in between. Hoops, rods, or iron bands surrounded the silo to give added strength against the considerable weight of grain pressing against its sides. An air vent topped the structure. A door to receive the silage was constructed on the outside, while a feeding vent opened into the barn. [190] Farmers also had to adapt the crops they did grow to meet the nutritional needs of their animals especially by growing hay and corn thus adding a new element to local farms and the visual landscape.

Those without the means to finance a dairy farm or who were unwilling to commit themselves to the intensive work it required migrated out of the St. Croix Valley. This began another trend that affected the ethnic composition of the region. Yankee farmers had been the most devoted to wheat and were more likely to move to the broader prairies of central and western Minnesota where they could use machines more effectively and where the soil was fresher. Their knowledge of the American political system also gave them confidence that public improvements in transportation would automatically follow them. Immigrants and their children, however, were more likely to remain where they originally settled. German farmers in particular were more attached to the land they homesteaded and were willing to take over Yankee farms and make them work by turning to their traditional farming techniques. [191]

For those who stayed the "Wisconsin Idea of Dairying" served them well. This "idea" was the result of the University and public agencies willingness to work in concert to advance dairying in the state. From 1875 to 1885 the Dairymen's Association clearly defined the issues and problems facing Wisconsin farmers and proposed practical remedies for them. They spared the farmer no criticism of their practices, but they also good-naturedly accepted the criticism of the practitioners of their theories. In Wisconsin, then, farmer, scientist, and government agent forged a close partnership in which "the new dairying has made the average farmer something of a scientist, and a good deal of a business man." The Dairymen's Association, the College of Agriculture, and elements within the Republican Party in many ways foreshadowed Wisconsin's Progressive Movement where in twenty years the state "became a laboratory for scientific experiment, teaching, and legislation." This progressive approach to solving Wisconsin's farming problems also spared the state much of the political turmoil and class antagonisms of the Granger Movement in the 1870s and the Populists of the 1890s in which farmers pitted themselves against big corporations and monopolies. In later years Theodore Roosevelt called the "Wisconsin Idea" a lesson in scientific self-help. It made Wisconsin the Dairy State and worked well into the twentieth century until new farming and business practices were forged in the 1920s and 1930s. [192]

In 1885, Dean Henry of the Wisconsin College of Agriculture began his lecture circuit of the newly inaugurated Farmers' Institutes in the St. Croix Valley. He visited Luck, Milltown, and Osceola that winter. Henry urged farmers who attended his lectures to diversify their crops rather than relying upon just one, particularly wheat. [193] Osceola had in fact just started a cheese factory in the prior year. Professor Henry had commended them for their initiative, gave advice on how to increase milk production in their cows through better feeding, and expressed his hope that more farmers would patronize the factory in the next year. Henry also pointed out that wheat cultivation was expanding not only in the Dakotas but also in Canada. "With all this region just developing," he argued, "why should farmers on the high priced lands of the St. Croix valley, persist in ruining their lands with wheat exclusively? To attain to anything like success, we must follow mixed farming, and the more attention one gives to stock, the greater the success." [194]

By 1886, Polk County heeded the call for more intelligent farming and revived their agricultural society and held a county fair — the first since 1863. "It is a gratification to once more witness an agricultural display in Polk County," wrote the Polk County Press, "and carries one's memory back to the 50s and 60s when Polk county held as good a fair as any county in the valley." [195] The next Farmers' Institute in November 1887 held in Osceola was a bigger success than the last. More people came than were expected, filling the hall to capacity at every session. Lecture and discussion topics ranged from the "Silo and Ensilage," "Reproduction of Animals," "Dairying," "Swine Husbandry," "Horse Breeding," and "Butter-making." The interest and excitement of the Institute encouraged Polk County farmers to organize a Farmers' Club. [196]

At a Farmers' Institute in River Falls, Wisconsin farmers were made aware of how farming practices effected property values. Farmers learned how farmlands in dairy counties were worth forty-five to fifty-five dollars per unimproved acre. Farmland in St. Croix County was valued at thirty-four dollars per acre while farmland in Sheboygan County was valued at eighty-four dollars per acres. "In St. Croix, that produces more wheat than any other county of the state, the lands are valued less than one-half of that of the dairy counties," related the Polk County Press, "in Pierce county, engaged in the same business nearly as largely as St. Croix, the lands are of nearly the same value...Wheat raising has cost us largely in the most valuable elements of fertility of the soil." [197]

The Farmers' Institute directors strived to make their sessions as practical and as helpful to farmers as possible. For the 1887-1888 winter program, the leaders recruited dairy machine makers to bring their latest developments and demonstrate modern creaming techniques throughout the state. Various companies had the opportunity to display their machines, "raise cream, and make butter if they desire." Oil and butter tests were also done from different mixes of milk in order for farmers to be able to actually see the differences that resulted from various methods. [198]

Some farmers were dubious of these institute lecturers who they considered "theoretical, rather than practical farmers." The Polk County Press, however, whole-heartedly supported these educational opportunities and pointed out to their suspicious readers that, "No man is employed in institute work who is not himself a practical farmer, the owner and tiller of a farm, who is carving out success by the intelligent application of brain and muscle to his occupation — the cultivation of the soil and the production of a better and more profitable stock." The paper urged farmers to attend these institutes as much as possible arguing that, "No state in the union is progressing so rapidly in its agricultural industries as is Wisconsin, and the progress is largely the result of the teachings in these institutes." [199] "The conclusions at which they have arrived are the pure gold of intelligent effort," wrote the Polk County Press. [200]

Institute workers were tireless in their promotion of their knowledge and findings. "They travel from place to place, frequently reaching sections of country not traversed by railroads," lauded the Polk County Press, "carrying with them workers skilled in the theory and practice of agriculture. . .They scatter. . .information. . .they awaken enthusiasm: they incite farmers to discuss their business; to compare methods of work; to improve their homes and lift themselves out of the ruts into which they have fallen." The paper noted that even country social life took a turn for the better thanks to the institutes bringing farmers and their families together. [201]

Despite the enthusiasm of the press and the standing room only crowds at Institute session that continued through the 1890s, change took place slowly. Farmers who clung to raising grain were on their way to the poor house as far as Professor Dean Henry of the University of Wisconsin was concerned. Dairying had brought farmers in Sheboygan County riches. In one bank, he claimed, farmers had over a million dollars in deposits. The land along the St. Croix was better, he argued, and city and lake markets were easily accessible. "They can just as well make their land worth seventy-five dollars per acre, and salable at that price as to have it in its present condition." The Polk County Press concurred, "The fact that every farmer here who had tried it has succeeded, ought to satisfy everybody." [202] One family that did successfully make the transition from wheat farming to dairying was the John Nicholas Thelan family of Houlton, Wisconsin. John Thelan had emigrated from Germany to the St. Croix River town in 1863. Like many other farmers he cashed in on wheat, but in the early twentieth century upon his death his eldest daughter Lucy drew up a plan to turn the family farm into a dairying venture, which included a large dairy barn and silo. She was successful well into the 1920s, but with the economic hardships of the Great Depression she barely broke even and died at the age of seventy-seven in 1940. The Thelans also left their mark on the St. Croix as Lucy's younger brother Edward was a judge in Stillwater and helped raise the money to build the Soo Line bridge that is within sight of the Thelan farm. In 1968, the family sold the land, but the farmhouse remains. [203]

While the railroad was the key to the transformation of Wisconsin from wheat agriculture to dairying, road building became the next logical transportation revolution for the dairy industry. Railroads might be the key to getting finished product to urban markets, but first farmers had to get their milk from the farm to the factory. Bad weather made travel on rural roads arduous to impossible, especially in the winter and early spring. Oddly enough the Wisconsin Dairymen's Association and the Wisconsin State Agricultural Society did not agitate for roads. The University's Farmers' Institutes only began to raise the issue in the late 1880s. What accounted for this reluctance to push for better public roads was not disinterestedness, but farmers' fear that they would lose their ability to pay for roads through their labor. They also wished to maintain control over where the roads would be built. If they lost this privilege, they might find themselves with a heavy tax burden and few roads that served their needs. State and county officials, they believed, were more likely to build roads that linked cities and towns rather than farms and villages. [204]

What stimulated farmers' enthusiasm for road building was the prospect of obtaining free mail service. In 1891, the U.S. Postmaster General proposed rural free delivery for all Americans. While this policy was not implemented until the 1930s with the New Deal, farmers realized Uncle Sam would not be able to show up at their doorstep if he had to travel along muddy, rutted, or washed-out roads. Within a few years a coalition of farm leaders, village merchants, people in the mail-order business, and recreational cyclists began to push for roads. In 1893, the Wisconsin legislature did away with the old local road districts and turned authority for road building to township boards. Folks in the St. Croix Valley were reassured that they would not be in danger of losing their property to tax delinquency since the law still allowed them the "opportunity to work out their road taxes." [205] While a modest beginning, road reform began in Wisconsin and the dairy industry was a chief beneficiary. [206]

Between 1890 and 1920, dairying became Wisconsin's single largest branch of manufacturing. By the beginning of the twentieth century Wisconsin became the number one producer of butter in the county, a position it held until 1950 when Minnesota and Iowa pulled ahead of it. By then Wisconsin had established itself as a leader in cheese production. Wisconsin's efforts were aided by developments along the St. Croix. By 1901, Polk County operated sixteen creameries and four cheese factories that also made butter. Pierce County was close behind with fifteen creameries. St. Croix County also showed gains in dairying.

By the early twentieth century the Wisconsin shore of the lower St. Croix Valley had successfully adapted to the sweeping changes that affected the U.S. economy since the Civil War. It met the challenges of the opening of lands in the West and the closing of the frontier, the growth of a network of railroads that created a national and international market with all of their resulting opportunities a well as problems. The people here became good custodians of this rich land. They restored its fertility and introduced a relatively stable and productive use of that land. [207]

The Minnesota side of the St. Croix, however, was much slower to adapt to dairying. The more self-contained Swedish communities in Chisago County and the northern part of Washington County were slower to respond to outside pressures for change whether economic or social. The Swedish Lutheran Church was diligent in "maintaining the Swedish language and culture," and "They insisted upon tight discipline among their parishioners." Swedish was spoken as a primary language even among immigrant children and grandchildren into the twentieth century. Farming was more of "a way of life" for many of these settlers. A farm "was a place to live and to raise a family," rather than a commercial venture. Many of the farms in the area around Marine began as part-time ventures. The farmers raised crops that the lumber camps wanted, and then they worked in the pineries during the winter to supplement their income. When winter jobs in the woods diminished, their style of farming would not support a family. With few resources to farm on a larger scale, many of these men drifted into the Twin Cities for wage work. [208]

Although the Chisago County Fair was organized in 1891 to encourage diversified farming, many farmers did not make the switch to dairying. Even in 1897 wheat was still a major crop in the area and a new milling company was opened in North Branch, Minnesota. During World War I the mill operated twenty-four hours a day in order to keep up with demand for its "Model Home" flour. The problems associated with wheat did not escape farmers here. A local saying went "Rye after rye, and you'll have bread ‘til you die; but wheat after wheat, and you'll have nothing to eat." Rye and potatoes, therefore, became their cash crop. Center City farmers found the soil good for potatoes and harvested from 150 to 300 bushels an acre. The abundance of potatoes required six warehouses to store them. A starch factory made use of the surplus. North Branch claimed to be the "Hub of the Potato Belt." Harris, Minnesota, however, claimed to be the "Potato Capitol of Minnesota" since potato buyers from St. Louis and Chicago made that town their headquarters. Between August 1 and January 11, 1912 527 carloads of potatoes, at an estimated value of $300,000, were shipped from North Branch.

Potato growers were assisted by the inventions of a neighboring German immigrant named F. Splittstoser, who invented potato diggers, sprayers, and planters. Splittstoser established a factory in North Branch to manufacture his equipment. Before commercial fertilizers were available, however, potato farmers ran into the same problem wheat farmers did — soil exhaustion. More savvy farmers used their years of cashing in on potatoes to build up their dairy herds. Through the early twentieth century issues of the Stillwater Weekly Gazette and the Minnesota Farmer circulated among the interested farmers along the St. Croix River and encouraged better farming practices. Chisago farmers began to consider dairying more seriously. Creameries had begun to appear in the county in the 1890s, but unlike their Wisconsin counterparts, all failed. The Rush City Co-op, established in 1907, became the first successful dairy venture. By the 1920s, several cooperative creameries were in operation throughout the county. [209]

Washington County also had its wheat boom years in the second half of the nineteenth century. Flourmills sprung up in Stillwater in the 1870s, but soil exhaustion, competition from western lands, and Rocky Mountain locust, forced farmers here to find other alternative uses of the land. The county revived its agricultural society in the 1870s. Crop diversification, rotation, and scientific farming principles took root. While dairying was one avenue farmers took in Washington County, many farmers turned to growing oats, corn, barley, and potatoes. [210]

Mining Illusions

Farming, however, was not the only lure for settlement in the St. Croix Valley. The prospect of striking it rich piqued interest of many individuals in mining when valuable minerals were found locally. It had been known since the early days of settlement that there was some mineral deposits in the area. Caleb Cushing and the Boston Group hoped there was enough to create a base for the development of manufacturing. Mining prospects offered the illusion of fortunes hidden beneath the feet of hard-working farmers or loggers. Typical of its power to feed fantasy was the story of Thomas Dunn. After the Civil War, he built a dam on the Yellow River. When water levels were reduced, some of his men found coal near the dam. When the men showed it to Dunn, he figured he did not have the time to check it out then since he was too busy with the rich harvest of timber to concern himself with a coal mine in a sparsely populated area. However, Dunn later tried to buy the land, but a claim for the land had already been entered. When the land was deeded back to the county, Dunn bought it all. In 1883 he began to mine it. "If it proves to be as represented by the discoverers," wrote the Burnett County Sentinel, "it will be a bonanza for Mr. Dunn and is good as a gold mine." [211] The bonanza coal mine, however, proved as illusory as most of the mining excitements that followed.

Copper finds generated the most excitement in the St. Croix Valley. [212] "Excitement runs high on copper discoveries hereabouts," wrote the Taylors Falls Journal. [213] In 1879, copper was found on the farm of Richard Turnbull below St. Croix Falls. The ore was reputed to contain seventy-three percent copper and seven percent silver. "The shaft at Turnbull's is down about ten feet," reported the Burnett County Sentinel in October 1879. "The workmen are now working in a vein of quartz rock about 12 inches wide, which they claim to be rich in silver ore." The discovery prompted a company of Milwaukee capitalists to put up $300,000 toward the mining venture. [214] Lumber baron Isaac Staples was not one to miss out on an opportunity to strike it rich. In 1879, he spent several thousand dollars to develop his mining interests near St. Croix Lake in southern Douglas County. George R. Stuntz brought in a party of experienced Cornish miners to do the work. [215] Confidence was high that the mining prospects would pay. "Copper is being found in astonishing quantities on the other side of the river," proclaimed the Burnett County Sentinel in 1880. [216] The Taylors Falls Journal was fairly smitten by copper fever. "The mining boom hereabout is on the rampage," it wrote, "and it might be well in this connection to mention that all the lighter colored beds of trap rock in this neighborhood are permeated with copper ores and virgin copper. In many localities rich silver ore is lavishly distributed upon the surface. . .and the present season will doubtless prove one of unparalleled activity along the St. Croix mineral belt." [217] In October 1880, D.A. Canady of Taylors Falls brought in a crew to open up a copper mine near the Kettle River rapids. "We hope he will strike it rich," wished the Burnett County Sentinel, "but we have our doubts." In 1881, the Berger brothers from Taylors Falls began work on a copper mineshaft on the Wisconsin side of the Dalles. [218]

The only serious copper prospecting on the Upper St. Croix River, however, occurred along Crotty Brook some time in the 1870s where three shafts were sunk. The site is located near the Coppermine Dam. However, this mining area did not bear much mineral results. [219]

In the 1890s, gold, silver, and iron were discovered on what some geologists called the St. Croix range near Knapp, Wisconsin in St. Croix and Dunn counties. Many mining companies formed with the expectation that they would find success. "Gold! Gold! At last we have it," proclaimed the Burnett County Sentinel in 1892. "P.E. Peterson has discovered that this village is built on a bed of gold." Mr. Peterson apparently noticed glittering metal in his water pump. He claimed that every pail full of water contained a teaspoon of gold. "Mr. Peterson says he will have it tested and should it prove to be of any value he will begin work at once and find out what amount there is." [220] "Verily this State is destined to become a second Pennsylvania," predicted the Burnett County Sentinel, "iron is being discovered all over the State." [221]

In the 1890s, genuine iron mining took place in Pierce County near Spring Valley, thirty miles east of the St. Croix River. These were open pits mined with picks and shovels. Nearby quarries south of Spring Valley provided the limestone necessary for smelting. From 1892 to 1900 the Eagle Iron and Ore smelter produced pig iron and formed the economic backbone for the area. At its height of operation it employed nearly one hundred men, mostly immigrants. In 1900, the operation was sold to a Chicago firm and named Spring Valley Iron and Ore Company. By 1910, the furnace was shut down due to the lack of demand for pig iron, as well as the difficulty of competing with larger and more highly mechanized iron mines in northern Minnesota and Michigan. The economy of Spring Valley declined until it became a small agricultural trading village rather than an industrial town. Interest in the iron mines reappeared during World War II. Although it was estimated that over a million tons of iron ore still existed, it was deemed an insufficient quantity to warrant the effort and expense to get at it. [222]

Another iron mine in the river valley was located near the town of Cable in Bayfield County near the Namekagon River. By World War I the mine had no longer been operational. Its open shaft was filled with water, and local children played in its trenches and pits. [223]

Overall, mining frontier riches did not come to fruition in the St. Croix River Valley. In a 1901 report written for the Wisconsin Geological and Natural History Survey Professor of Geology at Northwestern University, Ulysses Sherman Grant, explained that although the St. Croix copper range, particularly in the area around Taylors Falls and St. Croix Falls, had numerous exposed copper bearing rocks, most of the valley had been covered with heavy glacial drift sediments thus burying copper deposits that were estimated to be as productive as that of Keweenaw Point in Michigan's Upper Peninsula. While Grant did not deny the possibility of finding copper deposits here, he intimated that it would be difficult and costly. Thus despite some initial excitement in finding a few exposed outcrops, mining in the St. Croix never proved to be a serious industry. It, therefore, never served as an attraction for settlers to the valley. Farming remained the principle draw for settlement. [224]

Settlement Spreads to the Upper St. Croix Valley

The settlement and development of agriculture along the Upper St. Croix River had a much more torturous history than the lower river. The eighteen northern most counties in Wisconsin became known as the "cut over." These included Burnett, Washburn, Sawyer, Douglas, and Bayfield Counties along the St. Croix and Namekagon Rivers. The southern St. Croix River counties were technically not included in this designation, even though major portions of them had been "cutover." Stretching from the northwest corner of Polk County and running along the St. Croix and Namekagon Rivers up into Douglas and Bayfield Counties is a region called the Pine Barrens. It was composed of "coniferous forests and open expanses of sweet fern and grassy barrens. . .numerous pits interrupt the plain surface in some portions, their presence introducing sufficient unevenness locally to justify classification as hill country." [225] The first road up the Namekagon, named the "State Road," that ran from New Richmond to Ashland, was not cleared until 1877, which had precluded the possibility of settlers venturing here. These counties were also the most densely forested of the St. Croix Valley and did not have the rich soiled, oak openings or prairies of the lower river that might have lured the adventurous pioneer. Only gradually were more roads built into this part of the valley. The Hayward-Cable road was built near the railroad in 1892 and turned into a "county highway" the following year. Other logging and tote roads penetrated the forest. By the turn of the century, commercial logging firms had blazed their way through this region leaving in the wake of the lumbermen's ax stump fields, brush, tree limbs, and discarded logs. This created a turning point in the history and settlement of the cutover.

By the 1890s, the American frontier was declared closed and the best western land had been taken. Many Wisconsinites, who had shunned the north woods in favor of lands in the West, began to return to the state. "There now remain only comparatively small areas suitable for settlement by pioneer farmers in this country," Dean Henry related to the Polk County Press in 1895, "and today Wisconsin offers the largest body of good agricultural land for such settlement possible to any state or territory in the Union. . .Where ten years ago we could not have stopped the migratory crowd intent on reaching the plains of the west, many are now ready to hear of what Wisconsin has to offer in an agricultural way, and the time is opportune for gaining a large number of desirable people if we can only convince them that our farming lands in the new North possess real agricultural merit." [226] Other observers also noted this trend. People from "Texas, Kansas, and the Dakotas and Minnesota,'" related one cutover resident, "'have come back and taken up their homes permanently here." [227]

The proximity to the path of settlement established by the St. Croix River, however, brought settlers into southern Burnett County earlier than the rest of the cutover. Back in 1850 St. Croix Falls was "regarded as the dividing line between savage and civilized life," wrote E.S. Seymour. "Beyond that point of the river, white traders and others have Indians wives; and the entire population, with few exceptions, is Indian or half-breed." [228] But the pressures of white settlement were felt within a decade. In 1856, the county was created out of Polk County, and the Homestead Act of 1862 brought in Norwegian and Swedish immigrants as well as some settlers from eastern states. Civil War veterans with homestead credits also made their way here. "A homestead of 160 acres of land can be taken inside of railroad limits," announced the Burnett County Sentinel in 1879, "any settler who has taken 80 acres before can take an additional 80 provided it lies adjacent to the first. He can also sign back to the government his 80 acres and take another 160 in another place, the time he lived on the first applying on time he must stay on the last entry." [229] Many pioneers eagerly responded to the offer. "There is quite a rush for homesteads in the vicinity of the last twenty miles location of the North Wisconsin railroad," wrote the Taylors Falls Journal in May 1879. [230] In 1880, the Burnett County Sentinel announced that, "Emigrants are coming thicker and faster. A load comes up almost everyday. Most of them are settling in towns Eureka, Luck and Sterling." [231] Some of these settlers were disenchanted farmers from southern Minnesota. "Grasshoppers are the cause of their leaving," explained the Burnett County Sentinel. "Year after year their crops have been destroyed by these pests until they had become sick of the country and they concluded to leave." [232]

Optimism abounded that business and agriculture would thrive here. Those who settled in the southeastern section of the county joined in the wheat craze of the 1870s and 1880s. "The farmers are very busy harvesting," declared the Burnett County Sentinel. "Nearly all the wheat and oats in this section are ready to cut; and from what we have seen and heard, it will be fully up to the average yields of former years. Corn never was looking better." [233] Approximately 879 acres of wheat were cultivated in the county with an average wheat yield of fifteen bushels an acre, "which ought to keep the people of the county in flour, instead of importing as has been done before." [234] In 1879, the Burnett County Sentinel wrote about the "Flattering Prospects" that the county expected to enjoy with the building of a railroad from Grantsburg to Rush City on the Minnesota side of the St. Croix River through St. Cloud. "The road taps not only a region abounding in pine and other timber, but also traverses one of the finest agricultural regions of [Minnesota] and Wisconsin." [235]

There was, however, no escaping the problems associated with excessive wheat growing and the limitations on agriculture in the cutover. By 1883, it was reported that, "Wheat does not turn out as well on the barrens and away from the timber as expected, but in the hardwood it is fully up to the average." [236] By 1888, the Burnett County Sentinel lamented that "The cinch bugs will make harvesting and threshing of wheat unnecessary this fall. Wheat is turning yellow and looks dead throughout the county." [237] In the following spring Grantsburg voted to purchase a carload of seed wheat for farmers whose wheat crops had failed for the past two seasons. It was not, however, a hand out. Farmers were expected to sign a note agreeing to pay the town back the principal outlay with interest in their 1889 taxes. Some farmers simply gave up. In April 1889, the Dahl family moved to Chicago because, "Mr. Dahl thought farming did not pay in Burnett County." [238]

Wheat was not the only crop farmers grew in Burnett County. They had also cultivated livestock feed such as oats and corn as well as barley, rye, and potatoes. With the failure of wheat, farmers began to grow potatoes as their new staple crop. In 1890, plans for a starch factory were laid out, and by 1894 the Burnett County Sentinel reported that, "Potatoes [were] coming in quite lively," and the starch factory was receiving culls for grinding. By 1895, the Rush City Post reported that farmers shipped ninety cars of potatoes from that city. The Burnett County Sentinel complained that the Grantsburg area farmers then could only get five empty cars out of the fifty to seventy cars that they needed. Schools were closed for two weeks in October because most of the students were picking potatoes. [239]

Burnett County's abundant wetlands provided another cash crop — cranberries. Before 1870, scant attention was paid to cranberry marshes along the Upper St. Croix and Namekagon Rivers. Lumber, not cranberries, was what interested businessmen. Only Indians and frontier settlers realized their potential and brought them to market in their canoes or wagons. Cranberries were harvested with rakes, and ten to fifteen bushels a day was considered a good haul. State and federal governments, who owned these marshy lands, considered them as fair game for public plunder. [240]

In the summer of 1872, the lumberman, A.N. Badger of Oshkosh, Wisconsin was scouting out pinelands in the St. Croix Valley and discovered its marshlands, including the "Big Meadow" north of Grantsburg. He was familiar with the experiments of businessmen in Oshkosh with cranberry cultivation and hurried back there to organize cranberry companies. When these Oshkosh businessmen returned, they entered claims for 5,000 acres of what they considered the most valuable marshlands north of Grantsburg and near Fish Lake. The first two crops they gathered from nature's bounty netted them $10,000 in profit. [241] These cranberry harvesters, however, were not content to sit idly by and let nature take its course, and began to make improvements. Since it took about five years to get an acre of marsh into commercial production, cranberry growers had to have a good deal of initial capital for investment. "Men without capital can not engage in the business," warned the Burnett County Sentinel. These investors began to alter and "improve" the land to produce greater yields. Ditches were dug to drain the land when necessary, and then dams were built across these ditches to flood the marshes when more water was needed. Flooding the marshes killed off wild grasses and "other encumbrances" and allowed more cranberry vines to flourish. By 1875, forty miles of ditches and ten miles of dams were constructed. At harvest time these companies employed local farmers and their families, and even local Indians. This necessitated building sleeping and cooking accommodations for the pickers, and dry-houses, which were two-stories high and varied in size from 20 x 40 and 30 x 80. Badger's mill, of course supplied the lumber for the buildings and the crates and boxes to ship the berries to market. Large growers usually provided music and even a dance hall to attract pickers. Local newspapers cooperated by putting out the cry for pickers. "Cranberry picking will commence next week," announced the Burnett County Sentinel. "A good many persons will be employed as all the berries will be picked by hand, no rakes used. 75 cents per bushel will be paid for picking." [242]

Burnett County willingly facilitated the development of the cranberry trade. "The county has been quite liberal in expending money for roads and bridges," reported the Brunet County Sentinel, "and the feasibility of constructing a bridge across the St. Croix River is now being talked up, and will, no doubt, be built within a few years." The purpose of the bridge would connect the cranberry farms to the Lake Superior & Mississippi Railroad in the Minnesota side of the St. Croix at Pine City. By 1875, Marshland, Minnesota became the headquarters for several companies owning marshes and cranberry farms in the area. [243]

"'How's cranberries,' is all the cry now!" wrote the Burnett County Sentinel in 1876. In that year the Buttrick and Gill harvesters expected "to get 1,000 barrels of cranberries from their marsh this season." In 1882, Burnett County shipped out ninety barrels of cranberries. This increased to eight hundred barrels two years later. [244] However, the manipulation of water levels and intensive cultivation of cranberries also presented environmental problems. Worms began to infest the cranberries marshes. The only way to kill off these pests was to flood the marshes, but if the area became short of water, only Mother Nature could solve the problem. "The farmers are feeling good over the storm last Sunday night," related the Sentinel. "It came just in time to save the cranberries, for the marshes were being overrun by worms." Manipulation of water levels also left the berries exposed to damage from freezing and thawing. In the fall of 1879 leaking dams and seasonal drought conditions left cranberry marshes uncovered for the winter. "These marshes need snow on them the whole winter to protect them from the frost. . .Half of the vines on the marshes. . .were winter killed." [245]

The forest fires that often ravaged cutover regions also threatened cranberry marshes. The first reported fire affecting them came in April 1877. "The cranberry marsh owned by Andrew Ahlstrom of this village, and the marsh of Albert Bugbee's, were burned over last week," reported the Burnett County Sentinel, "preventing them from bearing berries this year." The marshes did rebound somewhat despite this dismal prediction. "From all reports, the cranberry marshes are doing well considering the damage that was done last winter and by fires last spring," noted the Sentinel. "There will be no big crop gathered of course from any of the marshes, but it will be the largest crop that was ever gathered in this county." By 1887, Wisconsin produced 52,567 bushels of cranberries of which 18,000 came from Burnett County. [246]

In 1894, a major ecological forest fire disaster visited Burnett County. The Hinckley forest fire jumped the St. Croix River and burned approximately four thousand acres of cranberry land. After the fire an attempt was made to drain fifteen thousand acres of the marsh for small farms. When this failed Crex Carpet Company bought the land to make grass mats. It closed in 1914 when other native grasses of less use to the carpet company crowded out wiregrass. [247] Much of the land in the Big Meadows was eventually sold for taxes to prospective farmers. [248] Large-scale cranberry farming began again near Pokegama Lake by the turn of the century. S. H. Waterman & Sons invested heavily in the area expecting to put a hundred acres under cultivation. They carefully selected the best plants, and over the years produced "Jumbo Cranberries." By the 1920s, Andrew Searles and his son, C.D. Searles, natives of Wisconsin Rapids, continued the scientific cultivation of cranberries and turned the marshes of Burnett County into a thriving business. [249]

Blueberries also grew wild in the area. Although native to the region, blueberries thrived in cutover lands when its towering trees were gone and sunshine reached the brush and only jack pines and blueberries would grow. These berries were very susceptible to frost and drought, though, causing the crops to vary from year to year. Pickers eagerly awaited reports on the condition of the blueberry crop in the North Wisconsin News that was established in Hayward in the 1880s. Some years the pickings were so slim it did not "warrant any foreigners coming to pick, at any rate!" In July 1900 forest fires and frost wiped out the crop. However, in 1901, the blueberry crop in the Namekagon valley between Hayward and Spooner was reportedly worth $75,000. During good years "it was impossible to harvest even a small part of the berries available," recalled Eldon Marple, who picked berries in his youth before World War I. "They grew in such profusion and abundance and over such a vast area that only the berry-stuffing bear, deer and birds ever saw most of them." [250]

Blueberries were often so plentiful many families made money picking them through the summer months. Some pickers even camped out in the woods for the season. Buyers shipped the berries out by the carload. Local Indians also joined in the blueberry trade. "During the summer," wrote one settler, "Indians came from seemingly everywhere with wagons and ponies and some walking carrying packs on the backs, to pick blueberries. . .there were as many as 500 camping at Webb Creek." The Indians traded the berries for various groceries such as pork, salt brine, and bologna at the Webb Lake Store. At the end of the summer the Indians were reported to dress in feathers and beads, play their tom-toms, and dance their tribal dances "day and night for long periods. Settlers could hear their drums for miles." [251] The Chippewa were even reported to harvest blueberries at the mouth of Clam River, selling them in Rush City. [252]

Although blueberries were sometimes shipped to places like Kansas City, most of the crop from the north woods was shipped overnight to Chicago on the Soo Line, nicknamed "the Blueberry Line," "where the berries arrived on the morning market, still fresh and with the dew on them." Conductors on the train would sometimes select a choice spot in the Namekagon Valley and invite passengers to grab a hat or apron full. "Passengers reported that the berries were in clusters as large and heavy as a bunch of grapes," reported Mr. Marple, ". . .a person could eat his fill while sitting in one spot." [253]

Although it had some trying times, Burnett County's future looked promising at the turn of the century. It had a gristmill, starch factory, and eight cooperative creameries and a cheese factory. In 1896, a refrigerated railroad car set off for New York City every Wednesday. By Monday morning folks in the East were enjoying Burnett County butter. Interest in settling this Upper St. Croix Valley began to grow. "We will boom as well as any of the places in this northern section of the country," boasted the Burnett County Sentinel. [254]

Although the cutover was often described as a decimated landscape, it was a truism of the nineteenth century that farming would follow lumbering as part of the onward march of civilization. The expectation was that blighted land would be turned into productive, verdant fields. This assumption prompted the Wisconsin state legislature in 1895 to authorized Dean Henry to research a book on the agricultural resources and opportunities in the state. A good part of the book focused on the more thinly populated areas of the North Country. In the past, lumbermen were the only ones interested in this heavily forested region. Once all the pine was logged, "the land which grew it received no more thought from the lumberman than the sawdust at his mill." The land's apparent lack of value prompted many lumber companies to forfeit their lands through tax delinquencies. Part of their reasoning was that if they recruited settlers and sold some of the land while there was still pine in the area, the lumber companies would pay the lion's share in taxes for roads, schools, and other improvements that did not interest them. If they hung on to their land until all the pine was gone, or until new growth could be harvested, they would be paying taxes for years on lands that had no present value to them. The initiative for settlement and development of Wisconsin's North Country, therefore, did not come from the lumberman, hence the state and other promoters had to take an active role. [255]

Besides its abundant timbered forests, Burnett County was amply endowed with lakes, swamps, marshes, bogs, and wet meadows. In 1850, the federal government passed the Swampland Grant Act that gave Wisconsin approximately three million acres of federal wetlands, a good part of which held valuable timber. These lands were then sold through public auction with the usual pre-emption rights. Because of the ubiquitous practice of loggers trespassing on state land and harvesting its valuable timber, the state felt compelled to dispose of its lands quickly and let private owners police their own lands. This land was desirable because it could eventually be drained and turned into productive farmland. The quick sale of land, however, often resulted in their being sold below market value or being bought up by land speculators. In 1871, Wisconsin Governor Lucius Fairchild asked that state lands be withdrawn from the market in order to appraise their value accurately. This suggestion went unheeded until the turn of the century. But at that time Burnett County still had thirty-five thousand acres of state-owned land that could still be sold, which was unusual for the cutover. [256]

Besides recruiting the ubiquitous Dean Henry to prepare a book on agricultural prospects of the cutover in 1895, the state re-established its Board of Immigration that year. The Board, originally started in 1879, was abolished in 1887 after most of southern and central Wisconsin had been settled. In 1907, it was reorganized and operated for the next twenty years. The board's main job was to attract settlers to the cutover by sending representatives to fairs, distributing promotional literature, and hooking up potential buyers with land dealers. The state distributed fifty thousand copies of Henry's book, Northern Wisconsin: A Hand-Book for the Homeseeker. Its reach extended into English, German, and Norwegian emigration pamphlets that used illustrations from the book. The Immigration Board also worked in conjunction with the Northern Wisconsin Development Association and the Northern Wisconsin Farmer's Association. The Farmer's Association dispatched "Grasslands Cars" through Wisconsin, Iowa, Illinois, Minnesota, and Nebraska. These converted passenger railroad cars were lit up by large electric signs boldly declaring, "Farm Products From the Best Region on Earth for the Homeseeker."

Railroad companies joined in these efforts. Because they needed to sell their land in the cutover, they offered to haul the cars free of charge. The railroads did this until 1906. The railroad cars were decorated with maps, pictures, and carried samples of farm products. The School of Agriculture also extended its Farmer Institutes into the cutover region. The state agency also encouraged the establishment of county immigration agencies. Beginning in 1895, Wisconsin also held immigration conventions throughout the state to excite interest in the cutover. [257] The state of Wisconsin's promotion and Dean Henry's scientific research in the cutover, historian Robert Gough argued, "conferred legitimacy on the idea of the cutover as a promising region for agricultural settlement." [258]

The twentieth century settlers of the cutover, however, faced different challenges than their eighteenth and nineteenth century pioneer counterparts. Northern Wisconsin was already a drastically altered landscape. The logging and mining era had left behind old company towns across the north. Railroads had penetrated into the far North Country to serve these industries and they built towns to support their needs. When logging firms moved on, town merchants, bankers, and newspaper editors were without a clientele. Railroads owned thousands of acres of land that had been granted to them by the federal government. They joined forces with the state's efforts to entice farmers into the area. [259]

The agricultural prospects of the cutover also began to attract interest from the Milwaukee Journal. On March 12, 1900 the paper ran a special "Northern Wisconsin Edition." Articles discussed the present condition of the cutover, what role Milwaukee could play in its development, and its agricultural resources and prospects. The Journal's editors enthusiastically claimed that northern Wisconsin's agricultural and livestock possibilities would make it the "'richest part of the state.'" The cutover even attracted the attention of the U.S. Secretary of Agriculture James Wilson who proclaimed to a Chicago audience in 1902 that northern Wisconsin would make a great agricultural region. [260]

Burnett County eagerly joined in the recruitment of settlers. By the turn of the century most of its forests had been logged over and the county needed to reappraise its future. The county had the good fortune of hosting a state immigration convention. It "attracted so much attention through the daily press that the county got a [lot of] good advertising." It soon formed its own Board of Immigration. Initially the county put its efforts simply into photographing its lands. It received a boost from the enthusiastic efforts of Edward L. Peet, a Burnett County newspaperman. Peet wrote articles and printed speeches and maps in the Journal of Burnett County in which he described the progress of settlements and of the great potential demand for agricultural products. In 1902, he furthered these efforts when he wrote a promotional pamphlet entitled, Burnett County, Wisconsin in which he extolled the unique virtues of Burnett County for prospective settlers. [261]

Peet had no particular love for the lumber barons of the county and was glad to see their days of dominance come to an end. "Up to a few years ago but little was done to attract the settlers to this county," Peet complained. "The interests of the lumbermen and others were in an opposite direction and more was done to keep settlers out than was done to bring them in. . .The day of lumbering is passing away and agriculturists are the ones who can in the future make money by locating in Burnett county. . .The scarcity of timber from the lumberman's standpoint and an over supply from the standpoint of the tiller of the soil are one and the same thing. It is just this condition that is now turning the attention of farmers to Burnett county as a place in which to make a home and is also letting much of the land out of the grip of lumbermen who have had no use for new settlers in the county." [262]

Burnett County's identity was still strongly associated with the St. Croix River, and Peet considered it a major asset for future settlers. It provided easy access to the headwaters of navigation on the Mississippi and the Twin Cities, and the northern part of the county was within thirty-five miles of Duluth and Superior, which were at the head of navigation on the Great Lakes. The railroad line that ran northward through the county, though, was critical for settlement. The man of science -- Dean Henry -- had been cautiously optimistic about farming prospects in the cutover, Peet -- the man of words was completely optimistic. Henry candidly wrote, "There is no royal road to farming in northern Wisconsin." Clearing a farm up here would be long, hard work. "The brush, stumps and undergrowth is often sufficient to make one's heart grow faint. . .before the ideal field can be secured," he warned. "No one should make the venture of home building in the new north before he has carefully counted the cost in the beginning and looked clear through to the end." [263] Ed Peet claimed Burnett County's farming prospects were as good as in southern Wisconsin. "A crop of timber is a sure index to the soil," Peet argued. "Hardwood land is the best agricultural land we have and runs largely to clay soil. . .White pine. . .is never found on poor land. . .People who are accustomed to a black soil and nothing else will have great difficulty in believing that crops will grow on any other color. . .Farm it well and farm fewer acres than you would of clay and you will make money." Peet admitted not all the soil in county was good, but claimed it could still be useful. "If you are coming to this county with plenty of money and want to engage in stock farming you are making a safe investment to buy clay land and go into the raising of clover and other tame grasses." [264]

Peet aimed to attract a particular type of homesteader and wrote, in no uncertain terms, whom he preferred. "The best advice the writer of this book can give anyone," he wrote, "is to not attempt to move a family to any place among strangers if the head of the family is unable to make a living where he now is. Cheap land is not the only thing needed to bring prosperity to the home seeker. There must be a disposition to hard work and physical ability to match the disposition. The ‘ne'r do well' is not wanted in Burnett County. . .Those who can help themselves from the start are the folks who are wanted. . .The natural local conditions will do the rest for them." [265]

Besides the wholesale denuding of the northern forests, the other major ecological change that occurred in this region was the draining of swamp and marshlands. This was seen as a progressive development in the early twentieth century. "Man is at work now continuing this drying process and the county is undergoing many changes, " wrote Peet. "Within the memory of the present residents of the county, lakes have changed to marshes, marshes to meadow lands and meadow lands have become good dry plow lands. . .There are but few swamps in the county that will not at some time in the future be reclaimed and turned into profitable farm land." [266]

Like earlier homesteaders in the lower St. Croix, the weather was a major concern of prospective settlers. Promoters of the North County at the turn-of-the-century optimistically spoke of the healthy but bracing quality of the climate. The shear abundance of wood for fuel, it was argued, made the winters more tolerable here than in warmer but fuel deficient areas. "Our winter storms are sometimes bad but they are very mild affairs compared with the prairie blizzards," commented Ed Peet. "No person who has ever experienced a prairie blizzard had any fault to find with our winters. Hot, scorching winds are unknown and drought seldom causes even a partial crop failure." Peet, however, also expressed the naïve and even quack scientific thinking of the times by claiming the climate was changing because of the denuding of the forests. "The climate is also changing," he wrote, "the winters are milder and not so long. . .and other unfavorable conditions will change." The expectation was that the climate would become more like that of southern Wisconsin. [267]

New settlers marveled at the fertility of the soil when new growth bloomed so quickly in areas loggers had cleared recently, especially if fires started in the left over brush had burned it. Popular, aspen, and white birch "seeded thick as grain in a field, and grew fast." Blueberry and raspberry bushes thrived, as did the deer that feasted on them. "The ground is just covered with blueberries," exclaimed the Burnett County Sentinel. Wild hay and pasture grasses, such as timothy, flourished. This new growth only encouraged the notion that the cutover would make a great dairy region. "The highest scientific agricultural authority says that in no place in the world is there any better grass for butter and cheese making than in Northern Wisconsin," proclaimed Ed Peet. "All over this region grasses and clover thrive. . .It seems to follow as naturally as a second growth of timber." Even Professor Henry predicted that northern Wisconsin would become one of the great cheese producing regions in the country. [268]

Farmers had not been unknown in the cutover. After all, lumbermen had to eat. Loggers, however, did not want homesteaders who would want the usual amenities of settlement, so they initially created corporate farms that supplied them with wheat, potatoes, vegetables, beef, and hay. An example is the Moore Farm. It was located in Burnett County (T42N, R14W). It supplied hay and potatoes for the Shell Lake Lumber Company until 1903. The first independent farmers in the area were lumberjacks. In winter they worked in the logging camps and in summer months they grew foodstuff to supply the camps. They were not self-sufficient or commercial farmers. However, their farm sites were chosen more for their closeness to winter employment than for their agricultural potential. [269] Burnett County had its share of winter lumberjacks and summer farmers. "They began [farming] when lumbering on the adjoining lands was the only industry thought worth following," wrote Ed Peet. "They have always had a good home market and have done well." [270]

Historic site surveys of the St. Croix National Scenic Riverway have identified few sites associated with this pioneer phase of cutover farming. One such site is the S.W. Slack farmstead (T36N, R20W, Sec. 30) in Chisago County, Minnesota. The site was originally within the subdivision of the town of Nashua. This "paper townsite" of the 1850s never attracted settlers and was later developed into what historian William Folsom described as "two fair farms." One of those farms was operated by S.W. Slack on an elevated stretch of ground that sloped gently down to the St. Croix. Slack occupied the site from at least 1888 and farmed it until the World War I era. In addition to crop raising Slack kept cows, sheep, and horses. All that survives of his farmstead today are clearings on the ridge above the river and a depression in the ground where the farmhouse once stood. Test excavations conducted there in 1982 revealed the remains of the Slack's domestic life, including flat glass, ceramic serving vessels, shoe parts, buttons and medicinal bottles. More in depth study at this site might shed light on the everyday life of the men and women who pioneered the cutover. [271]

As the cutover region began to expand, "Later day settlers have now taken up the lands from which the pine was cut so long ago," reported Peet ". . .and within a few months the railroad company has closed out the greater part of its lands to prairie farmers who are moving in with more capital than any of the early settlers ever dreamed would be brought into the entire county." [272] Burnett County farmers benefited from the proximity to the agricultural changes happening in areas further south along the St. Croix. The Burnett County Agricultural Society began holding annual fairs in 1877, and enjoyed its connections with the Farmers' Institutes. "Our farmers who used to raise hay and oats for the logging camps, and many of them who used to be half farmer and half logger," wrote Ed Peet, "are now devoting all their energies to the farm and modern methods are being adopted. They are going into dairying and stock raising and a manure heap has now a value in it." [273] The county's late settlement and access to rail lines, from the short haul logging railroads that reached into the county in 1902 allowed it to bypass the typical agriculture of settlement of wheat. [274]

A legacy of the logging era to settlers in the cutover was that they would not be "homesteaders" in the strictest sense of the word. By 1900, nearly all land in the cutover was in private hands. The Homestead Act, therefore, could not be used in most of the cutover. Although the state took up the role of promotion of agricultural settlement in the cutover, it did not direct or regulate it. Instead, the state of Wisconsin relied on private enterprise to turn this apparent wasteland into productive use. Unlike their nineteenth century counterparts, most settlers purchased their land from private landowners rather than claim land from the government. Cornell University had a considerable amount of land in Sawyer County to dispose of. One of the most notable land dealers was the American Immigration Company (AIC). It was formed in 1906 when nine lumber companies, including Weyerhaeuser-Laird-Norton subsidiaries and the Northern Wisconsin Lumber Company located in the Hayward area, decided to form a consortium to unload their land.

By 1939, AIC sold 438,000 acres to settlers. The company had also made a half-hearted attempt at recruitment with their American Colonization Company that folded in 1907. Railroad companies also sponsored low-fare "home-seeker excursions." These allowed prospective settlers to survey land before they bought. However, many land agents who met these trains often put the hard-sell on unsuspecting homesteaders, who made the mistake of buying "sight-unseen." One homesteader remarked in 1919 that land "'was being unloaded on unwary people.'" These agents often made a purchaser include inferior land along with the good. But land values in the cutover were relatively inexpensive and land agents offered reasonable down payments and repayment schedules. All parties expected land values to go up and those conventional mortgages could be obtained to pay the balance when it came due. This was true for the first two decades of the twentieth century when farm values in the cutover generally quadrupled and farm products fetched a good price during World War I. A lender in Polk County boasted there were no foreclosures there before 1920. [275]

Another ploy used to sell lands in the cutover, especially in Sawyer and Washburn Counties, was to claim they had mineral deposits. The U.S. Geological Survey had surveyed the Penokee-Gogebic Range in 1854 with the use of a simple compass that found magnetic attraction in the area. "'Mineral lands,' was the bait," recalled one pioneer, "iron and copper was everywhere! Any area that had magnetic rock formations could be hawked as mineral lands." Timber and railroad interests put pressure on the state of Wisconsin to do more prospecting. The American Immigration Company and the Loretta Mining Company, along with others, did some of their own surveying as well. By 1917 approximately one hundred holes had been drilled, mostly in Sawyer County. The results of all this drilling revealed no iron deposits but an underlay of Huronian rock that was laced in iron. The best that could be said of the results was that some of the holes provided great artesian wells of ice-cold water. Some copper deposits in the Minong Copper Range had been mined by Indians, but had little commercial interests. Mining in the cutover of the St. Croix Valley proved another elusive promise of wealth and opportunity. [276]

Unlike most of the cutover, Burnett County had a fair amount of government land that could be claimed. Because of its ample wetlands, a substantial amount of land was still owned by the state. At the time Peet's pamphlet was published, however, state land had been withdrawn from the market. "Vacant government lands are about a thing of the past in the northern portion of the county," he wrote. Prospective settlers had the choice to buy land from the Chicago, St. Paul, Minneapolis and Omaha Railway or from land speculators. Railroad land was, however, limited and many townships in the county did not have any railroad-owned land. The largest amount of land for sale was the "Baker Lands" of the Cushing Land Agency in St. Croix Falls. Most of the land available was in the sparsely settled northern portion of the county. The oldest settlers had only lived there for four or five years. "These settlers are men of thrift and industry," Peet claimed, "and have set about the task of transforming the wilderness into comfortable homes with indefatigable determination. Where a few years ago there was one unbroken stretch of forest there are now found innumerable fields of corn, oats, potatoes and all kinds of garden vegetables. . .the crops they have raised furnish ample proof that the soil is very productive." While Peet admitted the soil was mostly sandy with a mixture of about thirty percent clay, he claimed it had the benefit of moisture retention. He optimistically reported that the "settlers who do live there and give attention to their work meet with excellent success and at this writing it would be difficult to find finer gardens than those now to be seen on the "sand barrens." [277]

In 1901, an unusual group of settlers had come to Burnett County. Several women who had grown up in the sandiest part of Minnesota "and were not afraid of light soil came over to see what the county was like." They were interested in the lands along the St. Croix and Clam Rivers. Pleased with what they saw, they took advantage of the liberal Homestead Law that allowed single or widowed women the opportunity to claim land like a male head of household. These women made their filing for land, "went home, did missionary work and sent others to take up land in the same town." Within six months twenty widows and single schoolteachers bought land and started farming in Burnett County "and have already made a good showing." [278]

For the most part, however, the cutover was initially a man's world. Like earlier frontier eras in American history, in northern Wisconsin young adult males predominated. It took a young, strong back to clear these stump farms. Yet, most men found they could not get a farm going alone. Starting a farm in the cutover required the labor of the entire family. Father, mother, and children spent many springs clearing the land of rocks, removing brush and stumps, building basic shelter for the family and animals, and digging wells. In this early phase of development women's contribution was recognized and appreciated by their husbands. Men who could not find a wife usually gave up on farming. [279]

The slow, difficult process of turning the cutover into productive farms forced many heads of families to take up the lumberjack trade in the winter leaving their wives to care for the families and homestead during the long, lonely winter months. "The first three winters Dad worked in the logging camp," recalled Carl Kuhnly, whose family settled in Burnett County at the turn of the century. "He would walk about ten miles to come home on a Saturday evening, then back again on Sunday evening." [280] "Farmers in this country couldn't get any money excepting from the timber in pineries north of here," recalled Harry D. Baker, therefore "farming was very poorly developed with small clearings, log houses, little production, only a few cattle, and very meager living which was supplemented. . .by shooting deer for meat and by fishing and berry picking and making of maple syrup and maple sugar. Not until the development of the dairy industry in the nineties did farming become really at all profitable and the settlers. . .had a very bitter struggle." [281]

One way to avoid the difficult task of clearing land was to raise livestock. Some farmers turned to sheep. They thought these wooly creatures might do well among all the low brush. H.L. Russell, Henry's successor to the School of Agriculture in 1907, however, warned farmers that sheep were susceptible to parasites and would not do well eating forest scrub. Farmers eventually found out Russell was right. Dairying was the most obvious choice for livestock farmers. The Wisconsin School of Agriculture did not abandon farmers once on the land. It threw itself into experimenting with fertilizers that would enrich cutover soil. It established a branch station at Spooner, hosted a series of winter meetings with farmers in Bayfield and Ashland Counties, and ran a demonstration farm near Superior. The School also assisted counties in organizing county agent programs. The ubiquitous problem of clearing stumps also prompted the Agricultural School to experiment with stump-pulling devices to make the job easier. Dean Harry Russell even managed to buy up surplus military dynamite after World War I to blast stumps out of the ground. [282]

By 1911, the most northern parts of Burnett County were settled. In that year the Soo Railroad line extended its trackage from Frederic to Lake Superior. The line crossed the St. Croix River near the Yellow River at a town called White City. Thr bridge constructed to cross the river at this point is now on the National Register. Shortly thereafter the railroad commission began offering its allotted lands at public auction. One of their first buyers was Ed Peet, the enthusiastic promoter of the county. He proceeded to build the first hotel, which he called Danbury House and re-christened the town by the same name. [283]

The Chicago, St. Paul, Minneapolis and Omaha (M.ST.P.) railroad brought "land-hungry [settlers] from the cities and overcrowded farming areas" to the "stump farms" of Washburn County in the early twentieth century. For the next twenty years "settlement and fires cleared land until it was hard to believe that this new landscape had once had great forests." Fires were not just started as the accidental aftermath of logging debris catching fire. Many of these pioneers used fire as an easy way to clear the scrub brush to provide pasture for their livestock. "These fires often went uncontrolled and sometimes did not burn out for weeks," recalled an old settler, "leaving little life in their path. . .Vast areas became prairie with blackened stumps and rampikes to show where the forest had been." [284]

Farms or Forests? The Cutover Debate

While promoters lured settlers to the cutover, a forestry movement had also been growing in the state following the national trend to protect the country's rapidly depleting forests. The State Horticultural Society had been promoting reforestation of Wisconsin's timberlands and conservation for some time, and in 1893 it helped found the Wisconsin Forestry Association. By 1897, the state legislature created a commission to draw up plans for conserving, protecting, and utilizing state forests. Among its findings, it reported that of the original seventeen million forested acres in Wisconsin, eight million were cutover lands and claimed that at least forty percent and probably more was unfit for farming. It speculated that about ten million acres was solely fit for trees, and that if the state ever expected to collect taxes on it, only timber products could supply the income to pay any rates. By 1903, Wisconsin created its first State Forestry Commission. While it marked the beginning of state efforts at conservation, it inadvertently became a declaration of war to those promoting agricultural settlement in northern Wisconsin. [285]

Conservationists even found a few supporters among the homesteading pioneers. Soren J. Uhrenholdt is a good example of an individual who believed good farming practices and conservation were not mutually exclusive. In 1883, he and his wife Christine emigrated from Denmark, initially settling on a farm in Waupaca County. In 1899, the family came to the Seeley area to carve out a permanent homestead. By the spring of 1900 they had settled on 120 acres of cutover lands just north of the village. What distinguished Uhrenholdt was his dedication to his native values of planning and using every acre for what is was best suited for. He worked closely with the University of Wisconsin Agriculture School, attending its farmer's courses, and prospered by growing seed potatoes that he sold throughout the country. In one year he grossed six thousand dollars. In lean years he was tempted to sell off some of his timberlands, but felt in his heart that forestlands could be valuable in their own right. He, therefore, began to practice sustained-yield forestry and even began to reforest some of his own land. This caught the attention of the Agriculture School as well as 4-H Clubs, schools, and many others who sought out his advice. His old farmstead is off Highway 63 near Pacwawong Lake. When he settled here on cutover land in1900, Mr. Uhrenholdt began to reforest his land. In 1916, the College honored him for his outstanding cooperation. The original homestead is now the Uhrenholdt Memorial Forest and is now owned by the state of Wisconsin. [286]

Conservationist's hopes for the cutover, however, were dashed in 1915 when the Wisconsin Supreme Court declared state land purchases to create forests was unconstitutional. Public opinion was with the court on this decision. Governor Emmanuel Phillip had voiced his objections to removing so much land from the tax rolls, preferring productive farms. He also felt reforestation was a federal responsibility. In addition, the nineteenth century romantic notion of the rugged individual bringing the wilderness into productive use was still too strong and prevalent for a state mandated plan to return the cutover to its original pristine condition to challenge.

This anti-conservationist view was also fortified by the Country Life Movement of the early twentieth century, which tried to encourage the reversal of migration from rural to urban areas that had accelerated during this period. By the 1890s, the Director of the Census declared that the American frontier was closed. While scattered public lands were still available, there was no longer a frontier line between "civilization" and "wilderness" to keep alive the independent, pioneering spirit of the yeoman farmer. America was also undergoing rapid urbanization. This trend was noted as early as the 1870s census when farmers were no longer the majority of the nation's gainfully employed. By 1910, less than one-third of the United States' population was farmers. The causes for this historic shift were due to mechanization and greater efficiency of agriculture, the transportation revolution, and the expansion of industry. However, a loosely organized movement sprang up among Progressive reformers in land grant colleges, state and federal departments of agriculture, and among urban, educated middle class Protestants, who were alarmed at the migration from rural farms to cities. They believed in the yeoman ideal as the moral and economic backbone of the country. Not fully realizing the causes behind this movement, these reformers tried to persuade farmers to stay on the land by helping them realize the virtues of rural life over the corrupting influences of city life. In this climate of public opinion, many intellectuals believed the Wisconsin cutover had to be "redeemed" by the yeoman farmer from logging depredations. Family farms and tight-knit rural communities could redeem the region. Agricultural promotion and settlement of the cutover accelerated, and land values rose. [287]

It was the yeoman farmer who epitomized the cutover settler. They were family farmers, many of recent immigrant stock, who came with the expectation that hard work, family cooperation, and assisting neighbors would bring them an independent, if not a prosperous, life in rural America. While some immigrants came directly from the old country, many had first found jobs in factories, mines, or railroad work. They were attracted to the cutover by the prospect of becoming an independent farmer and enjoying rural community life. Many settled in communities of "their own kind." Scandinavians and Germans continued to settle in the North Country, but were now joined by Poles, Finns, and Latvians, as well as "Americans" from other regions of the country. Fishing and hunting opportunities also attracted many farmers from southern Wisconsin. [288]

Historian Robert Gough has argued, "that farmers coming to the cutover at the beginning of the twentieth century inherited this legacy of an unregulated, ill-informed, short-sighted, and loosely managed system of land distribution." [289] When farms began to fail in the 1920s, farmers began to blame lumber companies for their financial woes for charging too much for their land and profiting unfairly. The facts, however, do not support the populist complaint. Companies did profit from the sale of cutover land, but no fortunes were made. [290]

Settlers to the cutover were lured to the region by confidence in the current scientific knowledge of the time and trust in the honesty of land dealers and future market opportunities. These pioneers, however, came with few resources, and since they did not enjoy the benefit of squatters' rights and homestead laws, they started off with more debt and smaller farms than farmers in the lower St. Croix Valley. Upper St. Croix Farmers in the cutover would have fewer cushions to ward off blows from the failure of their soil, the weather, or the market than their counterparts down river. But by 1920, many cutover farmers had made a good showing for themselves. The U.S. Census for that year showed that land values in the cutover had increased to forty-seven percent of Wisconsin's average and thirty-three percent of farm acreage here was improved. Burnett and Polk Counties counted impressive gains in land brought under cultivation and improvements made. [291]

Despite these gains, however, the cutover was a comparatively poor region in 1920. "A land of plenty?" wrote one Burnett County pioneer. "For starters there were forest fires, poverty, horse flies, diphtheria, pregnancy, open air toilets, and ‘blood, sweat, and tears.'" [292] These smaller farms produced crops worth one-third less than the rest of the state. Part of the reason was due to the fact that many farms were still in the frontier stage of development. Some settlers were part-time farmers either by choice or economic necessity. These men worked periodically in the woods or in sawmills leaving little time for farm expansion. Some farmers were simply not interested in participating in a commercial agricultural market. They instead preferred the enjoyment of the natural environment and the outdoor life of hunting and fishing and farmed to support this lifestyle. Families were able to supplement their income from harvesting cranberries and blueberries. [293]

The farmers who did apply themselves to agriculture and participated in the commercial market, gradually turned toward dairying in part because of the climate, limitations on the soil, and because it required less capital outlays. Although it was more labor intensive, dairy products paid well. Bayfield County Finns and Danes led the development of cooperative creameries and cheese factories. Between 1910 and 1930, these sprang up throughout the cutover, and hay became the principal crop. [294]

Farmers had also been encouraged by the Board of Immigration to turn to dairying. In 1911, B.G. Packer, a lawyer and former secretary for the Farmers' Institutes, became the Board's secretary. Packer was responsible for changing the direction of the Board's purpose from simple recruitment of settlers to an advisor role to farmers. The Progressive Movement, which championed scientific solutions to social and economic problems, had a significant influence on the Immigration Board and the Agricultural School. Outside experts became increasingly interested in cutover farmers, who they patronizingly assumed needed their professional guidance to be successful farmers. "In doing so," Gough claims, "it laid the foundation for the public policies which would later discourage agricultural settlement in northern Wisconsin." [295]

Perceptions of cutover immigrants were also influenced by the "One-hundred Percent American" movement that sprang up from ethnic conflicts over the United States's siding with the Allied Powers rather than the Central Powers in World War I. The subsequent rise of the Red Scare led to a revival of the nativist movement in the 1920s. The Board of Immigration increasingly came to view some settlers as more desirable than others and some as more in need of assistance than others. African-Americans, who began their Great Migration to the North at the end of the nineteenth century and into the twentieth, were positively discouraged from settling in the cutover. Polish-Americans also came to be viewed as less than desirable by the state experts. They were described as drinkers and brawlers, infested with lice, and "helpless" when it came to farming. Immigrant churches, especially Catholic ones, were thought to hinder Americanization.

The Ku Klux Klan even spread its tentacles into the North Country. In 1924, the town of Luck in Polk County became host to a Klan den. Some people initially thought it was a social organization, — something the "dreary northern town" could use. They hoped the Klan might promote farm legislation or encourage its members to stop drinking or mistreating their wives. Its promotion of "American" standards and institutions, which meant Anglo-Protestant values, however, turned off many people in the area who were Catholic. Its white supremacy philosophy, hostility to bootlegging, and its fascist-like marches and salute also triggered public animosity. Hudson, River Falls, and Ellsworth became centers for anti-Klan resistance with support coming largely from the Catholic Knights of Columbus and bootleggers. The Klan's presence in the area was short-lived, but it managed to create "a great deal of trouble between what had been good friends, families and neighbors," reported an old-time resident. Many people of the next generation agreed that, "It is best forgotten." [296]

The eugenics movement of period also colored outsiders' perceptions of cutover residents. Eugenicists feared that isolated settlements of single ethnic groups would result in physically degenerate "hillbilly" people. These attitudes mingled with the growing perception that much of the land in the cutover was sub-marginal agricultural land. The Jeffersonian yeoman farmer ideal also took a beating in the first two decades of the twentieth century. Rural Americans began to be viewed as "backward, immoral, and increasingly dangerous." When an agricultural depression of the 1920s followed in the wake of the high-priced farm products of the World War I years, many farmers faced the prospect of failure. State and federal experts were ready to step in to prevent northern Wisconsin from turning into another Appalachia. [297]

In 1927, the Wisconsin Department of Agriculture began taking new inventories of county lands. Their conclusion for the state's northern counties was less sanguine than reports earlier in the century. Bayfield County went from having sixty to 70 percent of its lands deemed suitable for agriculture in 1916 to seventy-five percent assessed as submarginal for agriculture. Recommendations were made that at least twenty percent of the land be reforested. Reforestation advocates, thereby, gained support for their crusade. [298]

In the 1920s, Prohibition also gave the cutover an unsavory reputation. During Prohibition many areas around the country, of course, ignored or even flaunted the Nineteenth Amendment. Northern Wisconsin residents were generally "wet" on the issue. Economic hard times also encouraged the making of moonshine from potatoes. Some people in Luck in Polk County reputedly made this a "sideline." The cutover's remoteness and frontier-like environment along with its cross-roads position between the Twin Cities, Chicago, and Canada made it an ideal hideout for Chicago bootleggers. Al Capone allegedly spent $250,000 for a four-bedroom house equipped with machine-gun portals on Cranberry Lake in Sawyer County. In 1934, John Dillinger escaped to the cutover. His pursuit by the FBI and other law enforcement agents made national headlines, and helped create the image of northern Wisconsin as a lawless place.

The cutover's reputation was not helped either by stories published in Milwaukee newspapers that focused primarily on forest fires, hunting accidents, bear attacks, and any violent crime. The presence of unassimilated Native Americans along with the North Woods' reputation from the logging era as a haven for houses of prostitution also gave it an exotic and sinful place that needed reforming. However, the region unexpectedly got a reputation as an "upscale" vacation destination when Calvin Coolidge spent a ten-week summer vacation at Cedar Lake Lodge on the Brule River in Douglas County. Many elites became smittened by its "wilderness" ambience and thought it should become a resort location like New York's Adirondacks. [299]

For a variety of reasons then, settlers stopped coming to the cutover in the 1920s. The number of farms increased by less than three percent, and acreage only increased by a little more than four percent. When the Great Depression hit in the 1930s, farming in the cutover reached crisis proportions. While farm products declined throughout the state and even the nation, cutover farm products fetched a proportionally lower price for their goods. The sandy soil in the Pine Barrens produced grasses lacking in nutrition. Potato growing was also limited since the soil was too light and lacked the necessary plant foods. Dry summers turned into droughts for this sandy soiled region. Few farmers here practiced crop rotation or other means to improve pasturage. One observer described the cutover farms as, "Cropped fields. . .where a few cattle. . .find scanty grazing, are. . .These poorly fed and poorly cared for herds are the basis of a dairy industry. . .The industry is, however, small-scale in character, with poor barns and equipment and meager returns." Geographer Raymond E. Murphy admitted that the farms were too scattered for creamery trucks to collect milk profitably and farms were too far from the creameries to make a daily run. Farmers, however, began to find a summer market for their dairy products in the growing resort industry. To supplement their incomes many farmers turned to fur farming of beaver, silver fox, and chinchilla rabbits, as well as gray and white rabbits for meat. Many also turned to commercial cranberry growing in the marshy, acidic soil that ran through the Pine Barrens. Local Indians harvested wild rice by hand to supplement the tables of sportsmen. [300]

When the remaining land in the cutover went unclaimed, the old stumps and brush became an even worse fire hazard. Tens of thousands of acres burned in the 1930s convincing many experts in the state that farming had not "redeemed" the land in the cutover. To add insult to injury cutover residents were also more likely to need relief than their counterparts elsewhere in the state, and relief rates there matched other depressed regions of the country like Appalachia and the Dust Bowl area of the Great Plains. This put tremendous pressure on county agencies that required more in taxes but faced declining property values and a declining tax base. Since the 1920s tax delinquencies had become increasingly common in the cutover. This only increased during the Depression. Many farmers who could not pay their taxes simply gave up. "Almost as numerous as the occupied farms are the abandoned, tumbled-down farmhouses surrounded by fields going to waste," wrote Wisconsin geographer Raymond Murphy in 1931. "Sometimes only a few stones and a patch of quack grass remain to mark the site of a former home, and to give the impression of poor land and unsuccessful farming." The Pitted Sand Plain in northern Burnett, northwestern Washburn, and southeastern Douglas counties displayed characteristic features of farm abandonment. The first phase, Murphy noted, was that of "One little shack out in grassy barrens. . .occupied by an old man who formerly grew corn and a few other crops." Fire had destroyed much of the humus in the soil and many farmers neglected to build it back up. "After a year or two of use the corn field ‘got away' and now is a bare expanse of ripple-marked sand." Near the shack a few vegetables are still grown, but they hardly repay the effort, and the old, paralytic settler barely manages to exist." In the second stage homes were abandoned, windows were broken, and cleared land was overgrown with quack grass. The third stage is marked by decayed, tumbled down homes, and the growth of scrub oak and jack pine. Murphy found few orchards in the Pine Barrens since frost often struck any time of the year. He was also critical of local farming practices. "Instead of the use of scientific farm practices to combat handicaps of soil and climate, the common practice seems to consist of meeting declining yields by cutting down acreage until returns are not enough to pay the taxes on the land, and the county must take possession." [301]

What was particularly depressing about the Pine Barrens and the cutover in the early 1930s was the lack of young people and children. "The region is characteristically one of people past middle age — weatherworn old Scandinavians who came here with their wives and children many years ago," wrote a contemporary observer. "The children have grown up and gone. The Barrens does not hold its younger generation. No new settlers are moving in, and one gets the impression that when the present hardy survivors pass on there will be none to take their places." [302]

Despite these problems northern Wisconsin did not experience a net population loss in the 1930s. When the urban industrial economy collapsed, rumors circulated that subsistence farming was possible in the North Country. Many unemployed city workers joined the "back-to-the-land movement" that sprang up in the decade. Between 1935 and 1940 the population increased in the cutover as did the number of farms. Most of these new settlers, however, "were not serious farmers. They saw themselves as temporarily eking out a semi-subsistence existence, squatting on or renting cheap land, or perhaps living on part of a relative's farm." Gough claimed that these "farmers" had "a negative effect on agricultural development in the cutover." They did not clear new land or raise crops for market. "The properties they left behind when they moved on contributed to the image of the region as filled with abandoned farms." [303]

Despite these problems in the cut over, it was also the industrious yeoman farmer who managed to survive these economic hard times. By relying on family labor, the frugal household economy of the farm wife, off-farm work, and catering to the growing tourist industry, many farm families made it. Some even managed to redeem tax delinquent land before foreclosure. Gough found in his study that the majority of land that actually experienced foreclosure in 1930 belonged to individual speculators and land companies. [304]

However, New Deal agricultural programs were the last nails in the coffin for many family farmers in the cutover and across America. Large commercial farmers were more able to take advantage of these programs than subsistence and marginal farmers. The Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1933 aimed to raise farm prices through agreements to limit farm production. Farmers who had surplus acres and could still farm for the market as well as their families could participate in the program. The same held true for the Soil Conservation and Domestic Allotment Act of 1936. This act promoted conservation by encouraging farmers to remove land from cultivation. In sum, New Deal agricultural programs promoted the cash economy of commercial farming and undermined semi-subsistence farming. The Department of Agriculture also began to take the approach that lands that did not produce for the market were inefficient and unnecessary. These low-producing areas, it feared, would become another Appalachia if the surplus population not needed for commercial farming was not moved off the land. This view was reinforced by the migration of Kentuckians to northern Wisconsin. Through the 1930s Wisconsin underwent a series of relocation programs sponsored from federal, state, and county governments. This was a major reversal from the Jeffersonian ideal of the nineteenth century and the Country Life movement of the early part of the twentieth century. [305]

The Northern Wisconsin Settler Relocation Project, which began in 1934, specifically targeted the cutover. By 1940, when the Project ended $500,000 of federal funds had been used to purchase between four to five hundred farms in seven cutover counties. These included Sawyer and Bayfield Counties where the Namekagon River begins its meandering descent into the St. Croix River. W.A. Rowlands and Dean Christenson of the Wisconsin College of Agriculture requested the money from the U.S. Department of Agriculture then headed by Henry A. Wallace. L.G. Sorden, from the Agricultural Extension of the University of Wisconsin in Madison, headed the project. He was convinced this was the best course of action for both the farm families as well as for the future land use of the cutover. "All the settlers whose farms were purchased," he claimed, "were living on submarginal land, which was either too light and sandy, too stony and rough, or so isolated from markets that they were definitely uneconomic farm units." He felt the relocation was a great benefit since, "as many as 80% of the families whose farms were purchased received public aid." They clearly were not prospering in the cutover. "On the average, $2000 was paid per farm," Sorden reported. "These ‘farms' ranged from a tar paper shack in the woods to a few quite well-developed farms." [306]

Of the families that relocated only 38 percent asked for new farms. They obtained financing from the Farm Security Administration. One-third decided to retire since they were too old to begin again elsewhere or take up a new line of work. The Wisconsin Rural Rehabilitation Corporation built "retirement homesteads" in northern Wisconsin for these people complete with modern conveniences, a large garden, and even a small barn for milk cows. The county maintained these homes for a nominal fee. Others chose new occupations ranging from woodworking, to general laborers, to resort work, to mercantile businesses. The title to the lands they vacated was transferred to federal, state, or county governments for forestry uses. [307]

Sorden defended the relocation project in 1979 citing the fact that nearly all the families who were approached to relocate chose to do so. "When the project was explained and when the families were given time to think it over and talk it over with other people in whom they had confidence," explained Sorden, "98% of these families were willing to sell and relocate." Counties also benefited because "this isolated settler relocation project immediately made possible a saving in school costs of more than $15,000 per annum by closing rural schools." Sorden noted. "In addition, several thousand dollars worth of school transportation cost was eliminated. Road costs were reduced by the elimination of maintenance and snow plowing. Relief costs were cut materially by placing many of these families in a position to make their own living." Sorden took great satisfaction in the role he played in this project, and was confident that these people were given renewed hope "by their removal from isolated areas to established communities where they and their families [had] a chance to start over again with a more secure financial and social future." [308]

Historian Robert Gough, however, has taken a rather different perspective on outside intervention into the cutover. While farming did survive in the cutover after 1940, these farms either were worked part-time as a hobby or became much larger operations. In the 1930s, farmers with good land were encouraged by state experts to expand their holdings and turn to dairying. Those who did not have the capital or were not interested in the labor-intensive work of dairying farmed in a different way than the yeoman family farmer of yore. They grazed horses for recreational riders. They grew Christmas trees, pumpkins, or ginseng, or became orchard farmers. Most depended upon income from off the farm, especially the "farm" wife. "The new economic plan for the cutover which deemphasized farming and stressed reforestation and tourism," Gough argues, "did not attract new residents to northern Wisconsin or enrich the ones who already lived there." In 1990, the Wisconsin counties with the lowest per capita income were all in the cutover. They included Burnett and Sawyer counties, as well as Forest, Iron, and Rusk. [309]

The reduction in farms and the changed nature of those that remained affected the social fabric of the cutover. "To those of us who helped clear a stump-farm from the cut-over, there is nostalgia for the events of those times," recalled one old-timer, "for the feeling of pride when another acre of clover was added, for the excitement of a burning pile of stumps, or for the alarm when a wild-fire swept across the nearest hill." [310] "No longer could the bonds of rural neighborhoods be fostered by school pageants and district business meetings in one-room schoolhouses," lamented Gough. "With school consolidation, the daily rhythm of life now centered more on urban places with schools. . .encouraging the expansion of urban and commercial attitudes into the countryside once dominated by the values of yeoman farming. . .For the people in the cutover committed to yeoman farming these were sad developments." [311]

Historians may be divided over the role played by the limitations of the cutover's environment in the region's failure to sustain family farms, but all agree that larger economic forces played an important role ending that dream. Settlers here began undercapitalized and with more debt that more "pure" homesteaders. They undertook the task of trying to transform the cutover into a farming community when new trends and economic realities were transforming America. Mechanized farming required fewer hands on the farm, but allowed for larger commercial farms. The agricultural slump of the 1920s and the Depression of the thirties made farming less viable for many family farms. The consequences were that by 1920 the majority of Americans lived in urban areas, and this trend would continue unabated for the rest of the century. [312]

In the 1920s and especially during the New Deal years of the 1930s conservation, the forestry movement, and the budding tourism industry had gained in strength and momentum. The yeoman farmer was no longer the icon of American society. Preserving the nation's forests and other natural resources and encouraging a variety of people to enjoy the outdoor life grew in importance. The Upper St. Croix and Namekagon Rivers were prime areas for recreational development and reforestation, both working in concert together. Although the Lower St. Croix was a more established and prosperous dairy land, it too faced the expanding needs for recreation as well as the spread of suburbia from the Twin Cities. As farming faded in the valley a new vision of how to order the landscape was gradually winning acceptance. The myth of the yeoman farmer would yield to the myth of the "North Woods."