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    Crookston
    Crookston
    Crookston
    Ebook212 pages1 hour

    Crookston

    By Kristina M. Gray

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    Crookston was first settled in 1872, organized in 1876, and incorporated in 1879. By 1880, the enterprising young town known as the “Queen City of the Northwest” had 1,500 inhabitants. Its location on the Red Lake River and in the fertile Red River Valley secured its tenure as the Polk County seat. Crookston first served the northwest as a trading center, then as a grain shipping point, a lumbering center with large sawmills, a brewery and liquor distribution base, and a railroad hub with terminal facilities, a roundhouse, and office headquarters. It was also a banking center of the prospering northwest. By 1915, Crookston’s population of over 8,000 people made it the 14th-most-populated city in Minnesota.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherArcadia Publishing
    Release dateAug 5, 2013
    ISBN9781439642313
    Crookston
    Author

    Kristina M. Gray

    Images of America: Crookston was compiled and written by Kristina Gray, a Crookston native. For more than 15 years, she lived and taught English in China, Eastern Europe, and Central Asia. She highlights the artistry of many pioneer photographers whose images document the early settlers’ struggles and eventual triumphs. The Polk County Historical Society and knowledgeable members of the Crookston community provided photographs and explanations that tell the story of Crookston from the 1870s until 1929.

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      Book preview

      Crookston - Kristina M. Gray

      (UMC)

      INTRODUCTION

      Crookston’s beginnings follow closely behind the era of the French fur trappers and the work of French Catholic missionaries who lived among the Chippewa and Sioux Indians of the region. Crookston lies only a few miles west of the Pembina Trail, along which oxcarts laden with furs and goods traveled between St. Paul, on the Mississippi River, and Canada. The illustrious fur trader of this era, Joseph Roulette, died in 1871. Crookston was founded the following year. It was still the time of the Northwest Fever. Men (and women) seeking fortunes went back and forth across the border between Canada and the United States. An early sightseer of the Red River Valley in the 1880s viewed Crookston this way: Small in population, large in hopes and abundant in prairie chickens.

      Indeed, seeking one’s fortune was almost always hard going. The wooded area that later became Crookston could be inhospitable, with hordes of mosquitoes in the summer and vicious cold in the winter. Fall drought bred prairie fires, but the spring brought flooding. It was boom and bust. According to Mrs. I.W. Kinder, 1,200 people could be counted as residents in the spring of Crookston’s 1872 founding, but only 200 remained through the first winter, due to its harshness as well as a financial panic that infused gloom onto the earlier boom. Many who stayed survived on Red Lake River catfish. Many who left never came back.

      Early recollections, many published in the Crookston Daily Times, establish the details. N.P. Stone, an early farm implement dealer (and grandfather of the late Merle Miller), presided over the Old Settlers Association. Judge William Watts helped to publish the History of the Red River Valley in 1909. Early pioneer Halvor Steenerson wrote that the first settlers were, heroes who have helped build the empire of the Red River Valley and are worthy of a place in its history. All these men, who lived close in time to the events, knew that something profound had happened in the earlier years to make Crookston the 14th-largest city in Minnesota in 1913, the Queen City of the Northwest.

      Crookston’s initial settlement is owed mainly to the Red Lake River and the route of the construction of the railroad branch from St. Paul to St. Vincent, near the Canadian border. The railroad took the place of the oxcarts and transported the fruit of new farming activity. The early settlers came soon after the valley lands were surveyed in 1874 and opened up for settlement under government regulation. Among these settlers were Robert Houston, Robert Stuart, William Davis, Ellery C. Davis, Arthur Spendley, William M. Barrette, Joseph Jerome, Frank Greenash, James Church, Albert Christianson, John Peugnet, and L. Bailey. All government and railroad land available in Crookston Township had been taken up by the early 1880s. Many early land claimants, like William Ross, Edmund Walsh, Louis Fontaine, and William Anglim, became merchants and traders.

      Although the area surrounding Crookston has some of the richest farmland in the world, its cultivation came relatively late because of the need for drainage. Photographs of spring flooding and the discussion of drainage in chapter 2 touch on this subject. Investment in drainage was more than individuals acting alone could accomplish. Great Northern Railroad owner James J. Hill helped organize a five-county meeting on drainage in Crookston and paid for part of a general survey. Almost a one-man development agency, Hill also promoted the importation of wheat seed, including varieties from Russia. Crookston was named after William Crooks, the head engineer of Hill’s railroad.

      By 1929, the 50th anniversary of its official incorporation, the population of Crookston exceeded 8,000. It turned out to be an ominous year, however. The Great Depression began, and wheat prices dropped to 10¢ a bushel. Cattle shipped to St. Paul for slaughter did not even pay the price of freight. In fact, the farmer was billed for the shipping even when he received no payment for his cattle.

      Still, it was a year of celebration—of grit in the face of challenge and of lives invested fully. On July 1, in a special issue, Crookston Times publisher William McKenzie published the submitted recollections of 74 settlers who had come to the city at least 50 years before. Many of the vignettes from that publication appear in this book. McKenzie’s special edition gave the facts of the early settlers’ birth, when they first arrived in the Crookston area, and what they did for a living. Many nationalities are represented, including the French, French Canadians, Scotsmen, and Irish. Germans and Scandinavians came later, followed by the Dutch and the Polish.

      A farmer is using a sulky plow (one-bottomed) with a team of usually four horses. With this equipment, he was able to till the earth about three to four inches deep and lay over a furrow to the right of the blade about 12 inches wide. A gangplow was a two-bottomed, or more, plowshare that could cover more area. (NWROC.)

      One

      IMAGE MAKERS

      Some will agree that the camera does not lie. However, the pioneer photographers’ clients who could afford to pay for their likenesses perhaps wanted the truth stretched. Artist-photographers, as they were called, had the ability to not only produce an accurate likeness but actually to flatter the original.

      A book such as this comes about because individuals have access to old, vintage photographs tucked away in a shoebox deep in a closet. Retrieving these pictures, they will see the names on the outside cardboard folder of the photograph. Crookston’s image makers from the late 1800s were Gowen D. Francis, S.J. Chafin, Soren Johnson, L. Skrivseth, G.T. Hamery, P.E. Lynne, William Hartvig, Mons O. Mossefin, H.M. Rudd, and the team of Dr. Forsberg and H.J. Kerston. Then, at the turn of the 20th century, there came Arthur R. Hartvig, O.A. Osmonson, H.H. Chesterman, and HAK (also known as Niels Larson Hakkerup). Peter A. Johnson and O.W. Olson teamed up in 1911, and there was Carl Borghen, then C.S. Highness, and finally J.E. Benson in the 1920s. Note on this book’s front cover that a sign for Benson’s studio on Robert Street is shown.

      The possessors of old photographs may know of someone who is older and who might remember the names of the people in the photograph and have them write these on the back of the image. Those who have done this have rendered an invaluable service. Unfortunately, some photographs used in this book will not include the names of everyone in a portrait, but this book will credit names where possible.

      Some early photography

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