Fun Facts - Cloverton

1. Settlement in the Cloverton area began about 1905. Early settlers had to travel to Sandstone for supplies, a thirty-mile journey that took two days on foot each way. Later, a store was established at Pansy on the Wisconsin side of the St. Croix River, twelve miles southeast of Cloverton. Settlers could shorten their travel time by going this direction, but they did have to take the Pansy Ferry back and forth across the river.

2. The Soo Line Railroad was built through eastern Pine County in 1912. Cloverton was a small, unincorporated community at the time, but it had its own depot on the Soo Line. A Mr. Olmstead served as the first depot agent.

3. The village of Cloverton was officially organized in 1917. By this time the Red Clover Land Company was promoting settlement in the area. The Company had purchased 28,000 acres in eastern Pine County in 1910 and advertised for homesteaders through laudatory pamphlets. Settlers flocked to the area, but they soon realized that promises of fertile farmland were deceptive. The land was rocky and the soil not very conducive to productivity. Some settlers abandoned farming and turned to logging for pulpwood. Many moved on after only a few difficult years.

4. By 1918, Cloverton boasted 250 residents, a bank, a school, the only newspaper in eastern Pine County, two general stores, a hotel, a restaurant, a harness and shoe shop, an auto livery, the Consolidated Lumber Company, a bulk Standard Oil station, two land offices, several warehouses, and a farmers' cooperative telephone company. Timber production was one of the town's largest industries with over $100,000 in timber products shipped in 1917-1918.

5. Cloverton's newspaper, The Union Enterprise, was published by the Rev. F.E. Iams for about ten years.

6. The first one-room schoolhouse in Cloverton was built in 1914. The student population was expanding so rapidly that the school board added a second room in 1917 and a three-room addition in 1918. On November 11, 1919, a fire caused by a defective furnace burned the school to the ground.

7. By the following fall, Cloverton was home to a brand-new brick school, which served all twelve grades. At its high point in the mid-1920s, it boasted an attendance of 165 students. Cloverton school offered hot lunches, an advanced curriculum that included French, and a sports program featuring track, baseball, basketball, and kittenball. The first senior class graduated from Cloverton school in 1922. The high school program ended in 1946.

8. Oliver Halstead brought the first automobile, a Model T, to Cloverton. He had to drive it along the railroad track for the last two and half miles. Mr. Halstead used the vehicle to deliver mail and to transport children to school.

9. In April of 1925, Cloverton experienced a devastating fire that destroyed thirteen buildings. Many of them were never rebuilt.

10. Charles Halstead, proprietor of the Cloverton store and post office, served as a State Representative. He ran for governor on the DFL ticket in 1948 but lost to Luther W. Youngdahl.

Sources: Askov American newspaper, July 1, 1976; Pine County...and its Memories by Jim Cordes

The Red Clover Land Company Headquarters near Cloverton

The Cloverton school

The Cloverton school on November 11, 1919