Lost Settlements
Presentation to the Annandale History Club
May 5, 2014
Marilyn Gordon

---

Marilyn Gordon serves on the Pioneer Park board of directors and is active with the Kimball Area Historical Society.  Marilyn, a former English teacher and school librarian, is also the librarian at Pioneer Park.  Marilyn’s great-grandfather, Samuel A. Gordon (1843-1914), a Civil War veteran from Pennsylvania, came to Wright County, Minnesota, in 1870 and purchased 200 acres in Corinna Township.  In 1903 Samuel Gordon started Spruce Grove resort on the west side of Cedar Lake.  Marilyn’s great-great uncle, Hanford L. Gordon, came to this area in the 1850s and served in the Civil War from Minnesota.   

There are many former bustling settlements in the area that didn’t survive.  Marilyn asked the question, “Why did some survive and thrive and others die?”  The very first settlements in the area were started in 1856:  Kingston on the Crow River in Meeker County, Fair Haven on the Clearwater River on the border of Wright and Stearns Counties, and Maine Prairie in Stearns County.  The three settlements survived the U.S. Dakota Conflict of 1862.  Kingston and Fair Haven survived being bypassed by the railroad in 1886 and managed to be viable business communities into the 1970s and 1980s  Maine Prairie had a different fate. In 1886 businesses moved almost overnight five miles south to the new town of Kimball Prairie on the Soo Line and by 1929 the final building, the old Stanley store, was razed and the remnants used to build a garage and coal shed in Kimball.  A monument now stands at the former Maine Prairie site.

The first settlers were mainly Americans from Maine and other eastern states, followed by immigrants from Ireland, Germany, and Scandinavia, who came to the area looking for land and opportunity.  Trees were cut down and farms and hamlets developed.  The settlers contended with blizzards, grasshoppers, drought, crop failures, storms, and fear of Indians.  More settlements were established so people didn’t have to travel great distances on poor roads with horses and wagons.  These settlements usually had a store, creamery, and blacksmith shop.  Some had schools and post offices.   A few had taverns.  Some settlements had churches, although churches were usually in the countryside.

Marilyn mentioned many of these bygone settlements that were part of the townships and not incorporated.  These included Bianca, Fremont, Santiago, St. Augusta, Hasty, and Silver Creek north of Annandale, and Rassat, Albion Center, West Albion, Albright, Highland, Smith Lake, French Lake, Knapp, and Happy Corner south and southwest of Annandale, and Stockholm and Rice Lake south of Cokato.

·      Marilyn highlighted Smith Lake, Section 30, Middleville Township, Wright County, about 12 miles south of Annandale, because it was probably the largest and most successful settlement to completely disappear.  For several months in 1869, Smith Lake was the end of the St. Paul Pacific rail line and had a turntable.  By July 1869 the line had been extended to Dassel.  This railroad became the Great Northern in 1889 and the Burlington Northern in 1970.  The railroad opened new opportunities for settlement and trade for the entire area.  In 1869 a railroad depot and water tank were built as well as a store and hotel.  By 1880 Smith Lake had numerous stores, a blacksmith shop, hotel, boardinghouse, post office (closed 1912), sawmill, elevator, grain houses and coal shed.  Methodists meeting in Smith Lake since 1873 built a church in 1882.   There was a Church of God which burned in 1910.  There were also at times a two-story school, lumber yard, feed and saw mills, stockyard, livery, drug store, millinery store, dress shop, shoe and boot shop, and real estate business.  A good flour mill was just three miles north at Albright.  Smith Lake included 65 acres.  The 1901 plat included a public square and public park.  The town site was north of the tracks.  243-acre Smith Lake is south of the tracks.  

·      Annandale Advocate, December 21, 1944.  “The population of Smith Lake, once a village of 300 people, has dwindled to a total of six people.  Less than forty years ago there were four stores, two blacksmith shops, three elevators, a hotel, a lumber yard, post office and depot in the community.

·      Possible reasons for Smith Lake’s demise were its location a few miles off a main highway (U.S. Highway 12), and its proximity to Cokato a few miles to the west and Howard Lake to the east.  As these two towns grew, businesses at Smith Lake relocated or closed.  There were many fires, and buildings weren’t rebuilt.   Roads and transportation improved and people could travel farther for goods and services.  When trains no longer stopped at Smith Lake, its importance diminished. 

·      The first burial in the cemetery was in 1883.  In the 1940s, the cemetery was abandoned and the few remaining grave markers destroyed so that the land could be farmed.  In 2010 a group of dedicated volunteers found the location of 97 graves and solicited funds for a Smith Lake monument commemorating the cemetery and Smith Lake.  This monument is all that is left to remind people that there was once a thriving village called Smith Lake.  The monument is inscribed, “Smith Lake Town Site, About 65 Acres,” and “Smith Lake Cemetery Site, 230 feet by 250 feet.”  The monument includes a reference to the St. Paul & Pacific Railroad and also a list of the organizations that contributed funds toward the monument.

 

 

Notes by Annandale History Club Secretary