Friday, December 2, 2011

Historical Days Away Back in the Sixties

From Hinckley's Pine Wood Dart, August 27, 1891:

The early history of Pine county is made up of incidents almost equal to a yellow-leafed novel, and W.H. Grant, Sr., an old pioneer, can furnish these facts with ease. The gentleman was in town last Friday and paid us an interesting visit. Mr. Grant located at St. Paul in 1859, and ten years later in company with his brother, David C. Grant, came to the present location of Hinckley, then a dense forest, the chief denizens of which were wild beasts ... and erected the first saw mill, the site being near where the S.P. & D. roundhouse now stands. The machinery was landed at Pine City by train from where it was boated over Cross Lake, thence hither by team. Our present Jim Morrison was on the ground cutting railroad ties, and he has reaped the reward of the diligent. A milling firm was formed under the name of Grant, McKane & Co., from which Mr. Grant retired in 1874, but has never given up interests in this part of the county although retaining a residence in St. Paul. His company dammed the Grindstone and built a new mill on the site where stands the Brennan Lumber Co.'s mill. The old mill burned down, we believe, in 1875, one year after Mr. Grant's retirement.

The St. Paul and Duluth railroad was commenced some time in the 60's. In 1867 it had reached White Bear Lake, one year later Wyoming, and by July same year (1868) was completed to Rush City, and the night before Christmas 1869, the first iron horse steamed into Hinckley, then a timbered wilderness, awakening new thought and energy. Work was prosecuted along the line that winter and Kettle River reached by March, but the balmy winds of spring caused new work to be done to perfect the condition of the track. In 1870 the road was finished to Duluth, the present terminus. It is now one of the busiest railroad companies in the state.

Mr. Grant was notary public and empowered to do business anywhere in Minnesota, and had the honor of administering the oath of “allegiance” to the judges of the first election ever held in this precinct. His brother David wore the title of P.M. the first. Mr. Grant was instrumental in the building of the Sandstone stub railway which connects that village with the S.P. & D. road a few miles north of Hinckley, and is associated with his son W.H. Grant, Jr., in the banking business at this place and Sandstone, but gives much attention to other sources of wealth. He is a pleasant gentleman and a shrewd business man as his present financial standing demonstrates. …

The first newspaper was established at Pine City – county seat – in 1872 by H.P. Rubie who, in 1873, published a tax-list covering a period of seventeen years and for which the county was charged the snug sum of $3,800, and which created much dissatisfaction, so much in fact that the publisher was forced to shut up shop. The county was organized by an act of 1856 but which was somewhat remodeled by the legislature the following year – 1857. Then it was sparsely settled. The present population is placed at 6000. Then it was principally lumbering and railroad building. Now the chief pursuits of its people are farming, stock growing, lumbering, quarrying, and general business. To lose one's self in wandering over the county in imagination twenty-two years ago, and then come back to the present, what wild, weird and dangerous scenes greet the fancy. What a contrast! But there was plenty of money then, as now, and that was what was wanted.

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