Pine County Promotional Booklet – Part 2

The 1926 promotional booklet on Pine County included feature stories, advertisements, and sometimes pictures for each of the county's towns. The section about Askov follows. 

Askov

About 20 years ago a group of Danes started this colony in order to attract that class of Danes who valued the spiritual inheritance of their mother country highly, and who wanted to find a place where all the good and valuable ideas as to this life, and life beyond, might be preserved and propagated in their children.

The land was, in reality, a worthless waste covered with stumps, stones, and brush. It had been robbed of its wealth by the great lumber companies. Fire had swept over it and consumed everything left by the lumberman. Several times it was tried to colonize it, but without success. The settlers would not stick. The few that did stay were living in Indian style in small log huts, daubed with clay to keep out the cold and wind. Each hut was surrounded by a small clearing of an acre or so, where a little garden truck was raised; otherwise the settler spent his time hunting, fishing, and attending town meetings.

The colonizers were successful in attracting a large number of land-seekers and home-builders and sales went fast in spite of the physical aspects of the country. Mr. L.C. Pedersen, the leading spirit, was so full of the future possibilities of the country, which he painted in words so alluring that everyone who came in contact with him seemed to be inspired.

Time went on and things progressed. The country lost its wild appearance. The village grew; a public school was built, outgrown, added to, and rebuilt in succession; a church was erected, a pastor called; co-operative associations were formed; a creamery started; all things went well until this day, and now we have a smiling, prosperous community, dotted with beautiful, well kept farm homes in which dwell happy, contented men and women surrounded by romping, roundfaced, gay children. Instead of the stumps, stones, and brush the fertile fields are covered with crops of all kinds, and in the pastures among the scented clover dairy cows, thoroughbreds, are grazing or sunning themselves.

The town is a thriving village, newly built and newly painted, containing school and church and all kinds of up-to-date stores and the largest and best equipped printshop in the county, where job work running well over $25,000 was turned out the past year.

We have created a spot here in Pine county, Minnesota, which now and in times to come is worth hundreds of thousands of dollars to the state and to society in general. We have worked hard to gather our own people here, not in order to segregate them from America and American ideals, but in order to have a place where all the good we have brought with us from the mother country may thrive and bear fruit, and where we may in some degree, inculcate some of these ideals into our friends who came from other lands to found homes in America. We are a large community, but wish to double our number; acres upon acres lying around are idle and need a tiller, so if you are in search of a home, visit Askov and see its possibilities; then you may decide to dwell among us.