Spring 1974 Volume 11 Number 1 Ramsey County History Published by the RAMSEY COUNTY and SAINT PAUL HISTORICAL SOCIETY Editor: Virginia Brainard Kunz Contents Macalester and Its Spring First Forty Years By Edward Swanson................ .........Page 3 1974 Minnesota’s Wandering State Fair And How It Settled in St. Paul Volume 11 By Gordon Hayes...................... ......... Page 12 Explorers, Traders, Farmers — Number 1 The Early History of St. Paul By Anne Cowie, Page 18 RAMSEY COUNTY HISTORY is published semi­ ON THE COVER: The Baldwin School, founded by the annually and copyrighted 1974 by the Ramsey County Rev. Edward D. Neill, after he secured a charter for and Saint Paul Historical Society, 75 West Fifth Street, the school from the 1853 Territorial Legislature. It was St. Paul, Minnesota. Membership in the Society carries named for a Philadelphia locomotive builder, M. W. with it a subscription to Ramsey County History. Single Baldwin, who helped finance the school. This two-story issues sell for $1.50. Correspondence concerning con­ brick building stood on West Fifth Street, across from tributions should be addressed to the editor. The Rice Park, the present side of the Old Federal Courts Society assumes no responsibility for statements made Building. The school building served as a post office by contributors. Manuscripts and other editorial ma­ from 1857 to 1862. terial are welcomed but no payment can be made for contributions. All articles and other editorial material ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS: All pictures used in this submitted will be carefully read and published, if ac­ issue are from the audio-visual department of the Min­ cepted, as space permits. nesota Historical Society, St. Paul. 2 Explorers, Traders, Farmers * - The Early History of St. Paul EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the first in a series on the history of St. Paul which will be published periodically in Ramsey County History. The following article describes St. Paul’s earliest history, up to 1849 when Minnesota became a territory. It is based on research for the Ramsey County and St. Paul Historical Society’s new program on St. Paul history, and it deals with the years covered in the Society’s first St. Paul history display, now on exhibit in the Society’s new headquarters in the Old Federal Courts Building at 75 West Fifth Street in downtown St. Paul. BY ANNE COWIE hroughout the long history of cities, there miliar landscape in the St. Paul area from usually has been a reason, or a combina­ 17,000 to 20,000 years ago. As one glacier Ttion of reasons, a certain city sprang up advanced south from Lake Superior, it be­ where it did — a good harbor, a junction of gan to melt and deposited tons of rocks and rivers, a crossing of trails. dirt, called terminal moraine, to form the For St. Paul, it was the river — the Upper hills of South and West St. Paul. Then, as the Mississippi which became, for all practical glacier retreated, it deposited till or drift purposes, unnavigable at the point where over much of what is now St. Paul. Melting there was a convenient landing place, with water carved valleys through this drift. One gradual access to the bluffs above the river. such valley carried Trout Creek (near These foundations of St. Paul still can be present-day Phalen Creek) to the Mississippi seen. The great bluffs and the curve of the River. Trout Creek changed course several river are much as they were when the first times, creating a flat area of glacial deposits explorers passed by, and when the early where it entered the Mississippi, and this settlers later staked their claims near the area formed a natural landing site near the landing. But it is the river that provides the foot of today’s Jackson Street. Erosion later key to the history of St. Paul; it was the rea­ created an easy slope down the valley. son for the founding of the city, and for its MUCH LATER, the current of the river existence, and it has been a continuing life­ pushed steamboats toward this natural land­ line for its people. ing which came to be called the Lower Levee. Ancient geological forces, glaciers and From there, merchants could easily carry rivers together, determined not only where their goods from the landing up the sloping St. Paul would be located, but what kind of a path to the business district. Still later, rail­ city it would be. The bluffs along the Missis­ roads and a freeway would run along portions sippi were formed by oceans that covered of the same valley. the area millions of years ago. During the * ♦ * Pre-Cambrian and Cambrian periods, The first European explorers were drawn 3,500,000,000 to 400,000,000 years ago, rocks to this area by the promise of furs and the hope now below the earth’s surface were formed of finding a Northwest Passage to the Orient. from sediment in the ancient seas. The St. In 1680, Father Louis Hennepin, a Jesuit priest Peter sandstone and Platteville limestone from Belgium, was sent to trade and explore visible today were formed during the later in the area by Sieur de la Salle, the great Ordivician period. French explorer of the Ohio Valley. Henne­ However, glaciers carved most of the fa- pin and his two companions were captured by the Dakotas, who took them up the Mis­ ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Anne Cowie, graduated in sissippi on the way to their village at Mille 1973 with a master’s degree in American History from Lacs. They landed at the mouth of Phalen the University of Washington at Seattle, is research director of the Ramsey County and St. Paul Historical Creek, then crossed overland to the Rum Societies. River. 18 Later that year Hennepin was allowed to Mendota, as seen from Fort Snelling. From a travel south, and on this trip he discovered painting by Seth Eastman. and named St. Anthony Falls. He and his Carver undertook his famous expedition to party finally were rescued by Daniel Grey- the Upper Mississippi. Although Carver solon, Sieur du Luth, who had started from was primarily looking for a Northwest Pas­ Montreal in 1678 to look for a Northwest Pas­ sage, he also met with fur traders to encour­ sage and to establish posts in the Lake Su­ age trade with the British and he claimed for perior region. He met with the Dakota near himself a large tract of land, including present-day Duluth and proclaimed French present-day St. Paul. This claim, however, dominion over the area. He located Henne­ was never acknowledged. pin near the mouth of the Wisconsin River and persuaded the Dakota to release him. HE DID DISCOVER Carver’s Cave, a Another explorer associated with the St. landmark in the river bluffs that now is with­ Paul area was Pierre Charles Le Sueur who, in St. Paul. In his book, Travels through the in 1694, established a fur post on today’s Interior Parts o f North America, Carver pre­ Prairie Island at the mouth of the St. Croix. dicted a glowing future for the area: In 1700 he ascended the Mississippi, passed “. .. there is no doubt that at some future the site of St. Paul, then ascended the Min­ period, mighty kingdoms will emerge from nesota (St. Peter) River, to the area of present- these wildernesses, and stately palaces and day LeSueur where he built Fort L’Huiller. solemn temples with gilded spires reaching Le Sueur had a grant to mine what he thought the skies, supplant the Indian huts . .” was copper, but it turned out to be only the After the American Revolution, the land famous blue clay of that area. Fort Beau- east of the Mississippi passed officially into harnois, on Lake Pepin, was built in 1726 by American hands but, in reality, the British Rene Boucher, Sieur de la Perriere, as one continued to control the area through their of France’s last efforts to control the fur trade with the Indians. This was an important trade in central and western Minnesota, in­ reason, General James Wilkinson, military cluding the St. Paul area. governor of Upper Louisiana, sent Lieuten­ ant Zebulon Pike to explore the Upper Mis­ In 1765, at the end of the Seven Years War, sissippi in 1805. Pike’s journey was osten­ control of the area passed from the French sibly a corollary to the Lewis and Clark ex­ to the British and a year later, Jonathan ploration of the Louisiana Purchase. Pike 19 was to ascend the Mississippi to its source, Vetal Guerin’s house on Wabasha, near the investigating topography along the way. But corner of Seventh Street. Drawing by R. O. the expedition also was to be a power move Sweeney. to assert American dominance over the Up­ per Mississippi valley and frustrate the Northwest. On September 22, 1805, he British trade with the Indians. camped on present-day Pike’s Island, where he treated with the Mdewakanton Sioux for Wilkinson ordered Pike to select strategic land for a fort at the junction of the Missis­ sites for forts which could block the British sippi and Minnesota rivers. For a payment trade routes between St. Louis and Prairie of $200 and 60 gallons of whiskey, Pike re­ du Chien, and at the mouth of the Wiscon­ ceived about 100,000 acres of land — the sin River. Only as an afterthought did Wilk­ site of the future Fort Snelling. (The Sioux inson suggest buying land for another fort later received an additional $2,000 from the at the junction of the Mississippi and Min­ government.) nesota rivers.