Fifty Years In The Northwest
years, to aid in building the road. The St. Paul, Mille Lacs,
Brainerd, Leech Lake & Crookston railroad will, when completed, pass
through Princeton. An excellent school building was erected in 1885,
at a cost of about $7,000. Guy Ewing is principal of the school, which
is graded. The Grand Army of the Republic have a post here known as
the Wallace Rines post. The Masons have an organization, with a
splendid hall. A three story hotel, built by Samuel Ross, is kept by
his only daughter, Mrs. Barker. A two story brick hotel, the
Commercial House, Henry Newbert, proprietor, a handsome structure, was
built in 1887. The Mille Lacs County Bank, located here, has a paid up
capital of $20,000. Charles Erickson is president; L. P. Hyberg, vice
president; Frank Hewse, clerk. Princeton has one steam saw mill, two
flouring mills, one feed mill, two elevators with a capacity of 60,000
bushels, and one brewery. A court house and jail are in process of
erection at an estimated cost of $10,000.
BIOGRAPHICAL.
SAMUEL ROSS was born Aug. 22, 1812. He attended Western Reserve
College, but through ill health did not graduate. He came to Iowa in
1839, where he was married to Mary Vaughn in 1841. He came to
Princeton in 1855, where he took an active part in building up the
town and county, filled many prominent and responsible positions in
the village and county, and served as representative of the first
state legislature. Mrs. Ross died in 1851; Mr. Ross died in 1881,
leaving an only daughter, Olive R., widow of A. P. Barker, who was a
prominent lawyer of Princeton. Mrs. Barker was elected superintendent
of schools in 1880, to which position she has been re-elected and is
at present filling the office efficiently. She was the first female
superintendent elected in Minnesota.
JOSEPH L. CATER was born in Strafford county, New Hampshire, in 1828.
He came to Princeton in 1855 and engaged in farming. His name appears
in all the original organizations of town and county. M. V. B. Cater
and sons have also been active and prominent citizens of Princeton. M.
V. B. Cater died some years since.
EDWIN ALLEN, originally from Welton, Maine, came to Princeton in 1855
and engaged in farming.
JOHN H. ALLEN came from Maine to Princeton in 1854, engaged in farming
and became prominent as a public spirited citizen. He held various
positions of trust in the county and was appointed receiver of the
land office at Fergus Falls by President Hayes, and resides there.
A. B. DAMON came from Maine to Princeton in 1853 and made the first
claim on the town site.
C. H. CHADBOURNE was born at Lexington, Massachusetts. At the age of
sixteen he embarked in a seafaring life in which he continued nine
years. Mr. Chadbourne, wishing to abandon his seafaring ways, and to
put himself beyond danger of resuming them, came to the centre of the
continent and located on a farm near Princeton in 1856. He has since
followed farming continuously. His farm consists of 900 acres under
cultivation, 500 of which is devoted to tame grass and pasturage, on
which he feeds 150 head of blooded stock. He has a large dairy which
nets him $1,200 annually. He was a member of the state legislatures of
1874-5 and was seven years county commissioner of Sherburne county.
Mr. Chadbourne was married in 1852 to Deborah Crowell. They have three
sons and two daughters.
CHAPTER XII.
CHISAGO COUNTY.
LOCATION--SURFACE--SCENERY.
Chisago county, located on the west bank of the St. Croix river,
between the counties of Pine on the north and Washington on the south,
the St. Croix river on the east and the counties of Isanti and Anoka
on the west, presents an agreeable variety of surface, upland and
generally undulating, covered with hard and soft wood timber, well
watered by lakes and streams. Its principal streams are the St. Croix
and its tributaries, Rush and Sunrise rivers and Goose creek, and its
principal lakes are Chisago, Sunrise, Green, Rush, and Goose lakes.
Its lake scenery is unsurpassed in beauty. The county takes the name
of its largest and most beautiful lake. In its original, or rather
aboriginal, form it was Ki-chi-sago, from two Chippewa words meaning
"kichi," large, and "saga," fair or lovely. For euphonic
considerations the first syllable was dropped.
CHISAGO LAKE.
This lake is conspicuous for its size, the clearness of its waters,
its winding shore and islands, its bays, peninsulas, capes, and
promontories. It has fully fifty miles of meandering shore line. Its
shores and islands are well timbered with maple and other hard woods.
It has no waste swamps, or marsh borders. When the writer first came
to Taylor's Falls, this beautiful lake was unknown to fame. No one had
seen it or could point out its location. Indians brought fish and
maple sugar from a lake which they called Ki-chi-sago Sagi-a-gan, or
"large and lovely lake." This lake, they said, abounded with "kego,"
fish.
In 1851 the writer, with Bart Emery, made a visit to this beautiful
sheet of water. We found it what its Indian name imports, "fair and
lovely water." The government had, the year before, completed a survey
of the lake, and it was high time that it should be given a name by
which it should be designated on the map and recognized by civilized
visitors. What name more beautiful and appropriate than that which the
Indians had already given it. That name we at once recognized and used
all our influence to perpetuate under somewhat adverse influences; for
Swedish emigrants having settled in its neighborhood, a strong effort
was made to christen it "Swede Lake," but the lake is to-day known as
Chisago, and Chisago it is likely to remain. We believe in the policy
of retaining the old Indian names whenever possible. As a rule they
are far more musical and appropriate than any we can apply. The
Indians have left us their lands, their lakes, their streams; let us
accept with them the names by which they were known. Some have been
translated into English and appear on the maps as Goose, Elk, Beaver
and Snake. By all means let us retranslate them in memory of the race
that once owned them.
DALLES OF ST. CROIX.
Chisago county shares with Polk county in the ownership of the wildest
and most peculiar scenery in the valley of the St. Croix. At Taylor's
Falls, the head of navigation, the river flows between ledges of trap
rock, varying in height from fifty to two hundred and fifty feet, for
the most part perpendicular, but wildly irregular, as is common in
trap rock formations. These ledges are crowned with pine trees and a
dense undergrowth of bushes and vines. The prevailing color of the
rock is a cold or bluish gray, but broken occasionally by brilliant
patches of coloring, red, yellow or green, as they may be stained by
oxides of the metals, or covered with lichens and mosses. This
formation is known as "The Dalles," sometimes improperly styled
"Dells." The rocks composing it are porphyritic trap, an igneous rock
forced upward from the interior of the earth through crevices in the
crust while still in a liquid state and then solidifying in masses,
sometimes prismatic but oftener in irregular polygons, and broken by
parallel lines of cleavage. Some geological experts claim that these
rocks are "in place" as forming a part of the original crust of the
earth, but the balance of evidence seems to be in favor of their
having been erupted at a comparatively modern period. This is
evidenced by the presence of water-worn boulders and pebbles, imbedded
in the trap, somewhat like plums in a pudding, while it was yet
plastic; and now forming a species of conglomerate as hard and compact
as the trap itself. These rocks are supposed to be rich in copper and
silver, and miners have spent much time in prospecting for these
metals.
Whatever the origin of the rocks, it is conceded that they were once
plastic, at which time this region could not have been a safe or
pleasant dwelling place for such beings as now inhabit the world. The
theory of a comparatively recent eruption of these rocks is not a
pleasant one, for the suggestion forces itself upon the mind that that
which has been, at least in recent times, may occur again. The
occasional recurrence of earthquakes on our western coast, and the
recent severe disturbances in South Carolina and Georgia, raise the
query whether this region may not again be visited with an outburst
and overflow of trap, terrible and destructive as the first. The
foundations, however, seem firm enough to last forever. The rocks are
of unusual hardness, and the crust of the earth is probably as solid
and thick here as elsewhere. The Dalles proper are about one mile in
length. The river, in its passage through them, varies in width from
one hundred and fifty to three hundred feet. It was formerly reported
unfathomable, but in recent years, owing to a filling up process
caused by the debris of the log drivers, it is found to be not more
than a hundred feet in its deepest place. The river makes an abrupt
bend about a bold promontory of trap known as Angle or Elbow Rock. To
the first voyageurs this seemed to be the end of the river, and gave
rise to the story that at this point the river burst out of the rocks.
Much of the frontage of the rocks upon the river is smooth and
perpendicular, and stained with oxides of iron and copper. In places
it is broken. The upper rocks are disintegrated by the action of rain
and frost, and, where far enough from the river, have fallen so as to
form a talus or slope of angular fragments to the water's edge.
THE DEVIL'S CHAIR.
There are some instances in which, by the breaking away and falling of
smaller rocks, larger rocks have been left standing in the form of
columns. Most notable of these are the "Devil's Pulpit," and the
"Devil's Chair." The former, owing to surrounding shrubbery, is not
easily seen. The latter is a conspicuous object on the western shore
of the river a few rods below the lower landing. It stands on the
slope formed by the debris of a precipice that rises here about 120
feet above the river. Its base is about 40 feet above low water mark;
the column itself reaches 45 feet higher. It is composed of many
angular pieces of trap, the upper portion bearing a rude resemblance
to a chair. It is considered quite a feat to climb to the summit. The
face of the rocks is disfigured by the names of ambitious and
undeserving persons. The nuisance of names and advertisements painted
upon the most prominent rocks in the Dalles is one that every lover of
Nature will wish to have abated. To spend an hour climbing amongst
these precipices to find in some conspicuous place the advertisement
of a quack medicine, illustrates the adage: "There is but one step
from the sublime to the ridiculous."
THE WELLS.
A more remarkable curiosity may be found on that bench or middle
plateau of the Dalles, lying between the upper and the lower Taylor's
Falls landings, in what has been not inaptly styled "The Wells." These
are openings, or pits, not much unlike wells, in places where the trap
is not more than 50 feet above water level, varying in width from a
few inches to 30 or 40 feet, the deepest being from 20 to 25 feet.
These seem to have been formed by the action of water upon pebbles or
boulders, much as "pot holes" are now being formed in the rocky
bottoms of running streams. The water falls upon the pebbles or
boulders in such a way as to cause them to revolve and act as a drill,
boring holes in the rock proportioned to the force of the agencies
employed. Some of these boulders and pebbles, worn to a spherical
shape, were originally found at the bottoms of these wells, but have
been mostly carried away by the curious. Some of the wells are cut