It Is Just Enough Elevated To Have
Good Drainage Facilities, Should It Become Densely Populous.
For many
years it was the seat of a trading post among the Winnebagoes.
But the
date of its start as a town is not more than six months ago; since
when it has been advancing with unsurpassed thrift, on a scale of
affluence and durability. Its main street is surely a street in other
respects than in the name; for it has on either side several neatly
built three-story blocks of stores, around which the gathering of
teams and of people denotes such an activity of business as to dispel
any idea that the place is got up under false pretences. The St. Cloud
advertisements in the St. Paul daily papers contain the cards of about
forty different firms or individuals, which is a sort of index to the
business of the place. A printing press is already in the town, and a
paper will in a few days be issued. There are now two hotels; one of
which (the Stearns House), it is said, cost $9000. A flourishing
saw-mill was destroyed by fire, and in a few weeks another one was
built in its place. An Episcopal church is being erected. The steamer
"H. M. Rice" runs between here and St. Anthony. It is sometimes said
that this is the head of the Upper Mississippi navigation, but such is
not the case. The Sauk Rapids which terminate here are an obstruction
to continuous navigation between St. Anthony and Crow Wing, but after
you get to the latter place (where the river is twenty feet deep)
there is good navigation for two hundred miles. There are several
roads laid out to intersect at St. Cloud, for the construction of
which, I believe, the government has made some appropriation. Town
lots are sold on reasonable terms to those who intend to make
improvements on them, which is the true policy for any town, but the
general market price ranges from $100 to $1000 a lot. The town is not
in the hands of capitalists, though moneyed men are interested in it.
General Lowry is a large proprietor. He lives at Arcadia, just above
the town limits, and has a farm consisting of three hundred acres of
the most splendid land, which is well stocked with cattle and durably
fenced. A better barn, or a neater farmyard than he has, cannot be
found between Boston and Worcester. And while speaking of barns I
would observe that the old New England custom of having good barns is
better observed in Minnesota than anywhere else in the West. General
Lowry has been engaged in mercantile business. He was formerly a
member of the territorial council, and is a very useful and valuable
citizen of the territory.
It would not be more surprising to have Eastern people doubt some of
the statements concerning the growth of Western towns, than it was for
the king of Siam to doubt that there was any part of the world where
water changed from liquid to a hard substance. His majesty knew
nothing about ice. Now, there are a good many handsome villages in the
East which hardly support one store. Not that people in such a village
do not consume as much or live in finer style; but the reason is that
they are old settlers who produce very much that they live on, and
who, by great travelling facilities, are able to scatter their trading
custom into some commercial metropolis. Suppose, however, one of your
large villages to be so newly settled that the people have had no
chance to raise anything from their gardens or their fields, and are
obliged to buy all they are to eat and all that is to furnish their
dwellings, or equip their shops, or stock their farms; then you have a
state of things which will support several stores, and a whole
catalogue of trades. It is a state of affairs which corresponds with
every new settlement in the West; or, indeed, which faintly compares
with the demand for everything merchantable, peculiar in such places.
Then again, besides the actual residents in a new place, who have
money enough in their pockets, but nothing in their cellars, there is
generally a large population in the back country of farmers and no
stores. Such people come to a place like this to trade, for fifteen or
twenty miles back, perhaps; and it being a county seat they have other
objects to bring them. At the same time there is an almost constant
flow of settlers through the place into the unoccupied country to find
preemption claims, who, of course, wish to take supplies with them.
The settler takes a day, perhaps, for his visit in town to trade. Time
is precious with him, and he cannot come often. So he buys, perhaps,
fifty or a hundred dollars worth of goods. These are circumstances
which account for activity of business in these river towns, and
which, though they are strikingly apparent here, are not peculiar to
this town. At first, I confess, it was a mystery to me what could
produce such startling and profitable trade in these new towns.
It was in the immediate vicinity of St. Cloud that Gov. Stevens left
the Mississippi on his exploration, in 1853, of a railroad route to
the Pacific. Several crossings of the river had been previously
examined, and it was found that one of the favorable points for a
railroad bridge over it was here. I might here say that the country
directly west lies in the valley of Sauk River, and from my own
observation I know it to be a good farming country; and I believe the
land is taken up by settlers as far back as twelve miles. It is a
little upwards of a hundred miles in a westerly direction from St.
Cloud to where the expedition first touched the Bois des Sioux (or
Sioux Wood River). Gov.
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