A Great Deal Of Timber Will
Also Come Down The Crow Wing River, Which Is A Large Stream, Navigable
Three Months In The Year.
Arrangements are complete for building a
steamboat the ensuing winter, at this very place, to begin running in
the spring as far up as Ojibeway.
Next season there will be a daily
line of stages between this and St. Paul. I understand also that it is
intended next summer to connect Crow Wing with the flourishing town of
Superior by stage. It will require considerable energy to do this
thing; but if it can be done, it will be a great blessing to the
traveller as well as a profit to the town. The journey from St. Paul
to Lake Superior via Crow Wing can then be performed in three days,
while on the usual route it now occupies a week. Such are some of the
favorable circumstances which corroborate the expectation of the
growth of this place. The southern or lower portion of the town is
included within the Fort Ripley reserve, and though several residences
are situated on it, no other buildings can be put up without a license
from the commanding officer; nor can any lots be sold from that
portion until the reserve is cut down. With the upper part of the town
it is different. Mr. C. H. Beaulieu, long a resident of the place, is
the proprietor of that part, and has already, I am informed, made some
extensive sales of lots. He is one of those lucky individuals, who
have sagacity to locate on an available spot, and patience to wait the
opening of a splendid fortune.[1]
[1 Since this letter was written, Mr. Thomas Cathcart has purchased a
valuable claim opposite Crow Wing at the mouth of the river, which I
should think was an available town site.]
My observation and experience in regard to town sites have taught me
an important fact: that as much depends on the public spirit, unity of
action, and zeal of the early proprietors, as upon the locality
itself. The one is useless without these helps. General Washington
wrote an able essay to prove the availability of Norfolk, Va., as the
great commercial metropolis of the country. He speculated upon its
being the great market for the West. His imagination pictured out some
such place as New York now is, as its future. The unequalled harbor of
Norfolk, and the resources of the country all around it, extending as
far, almost, as thought could reach, might well have encouraged the
theory of Washington. But munificence and energy and labor have built
up many cities since then, which had not half the natural advantages
of Norfolk, while Norfolk is far behind. A little lack of enterprise,
a little lack of harmony and liberality, may, in the early days of a
town, divert business and improvements from a good location, till in a
short time an unheard-of and inferior place totally eclipses it.
Knowing this to be the case, I have been careful in my previous
letters not to give too much importance to many of the town sites
which have been commended to me along my journey.
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