A Short History of North Branch
By Sue Leaf
The community of North Branch, Minnesota is built on a flat, sandy plain, the
Anoka Sandplain. Both the sand and the lack of hills are a result of the work of glaciers
that once covered Minnesota.
When the glaciers receded, 13,000 years ago, water carrying sand flowed from the
melting ice and deposited it in east central Minnesota. The flowing streams became
dammed, forming sheets of shallow water. Water currents in this glacial lake shifted and
smoothed the sand. When the lake dried up, what remained was the flat, sandy plain.
People lived on the sandplain as long ago as 11,000 years. Not much is known
about these early natives, but researchers think they hunted bison and moved from camp
to camp, not building permanent settlements.
At the time of the fur trade in the 1700’s, Dakota Indians, who relied heavily on
wild rice and fish for food, lived near what is now North Branch. They soon moved west,
in part because the Ojibwe Indians were moving into the area, pushed out of their home
in eastern North America by the expansion of European settlement. For the next hundred
years, the sandplain was a buffer between the two tribes, who were not often friendly.
Fighting occurred for control of the area. The many deer in the woodlands were one
reason for the fighting.
In 1837, the Ojibwe people gave up their claim to east central Minnesota in a
treaty with the United States government. The treaty allowed lumbermen to cut the white
pines along the St. Croix River and in the vast pine forests north of North Branch in what
is now Pine and Carleton Counties. When Minnesota was made a territory in 1849, more
Euro-American settlers moved into Chisago County, people who were interested in
making a home in the new territory, in farming or shopkeeping. These people settled
close to the St. Croix River that had brought them into the area by steamboat. The North
Branch area remained largely unsettled. In 1858, Minnesota became a state. Soon after,
the United States was involved in the Civil War (1861-1865) and further settlement of the
new state slowed until after the war.
In the 1860’s St. Paul banker William Banning and other St. Paul business men
organized to promote a railroad between St. Paul and Duluth. The Lake Superior and
Mississippi Railroad was completed in 1870. St. Paul and Duluth had been connected in
the 1850’s by a rough Government Road that the stagecoach used. Now they were linked
a second time, bringing the major urban area of Minnesota-- the Twin Cities—in contact
with the shipping routes through the Great Lakes to big cities in the eastern United States.
The new tracks put Minnesota in touch with the rest of the world. The state could ship out
raw materials and receive manufactured goods much more easily.
1
“North Branch Station” was sited by the railroad company on the north branch of
the Sunrise River that same year. The railroad wanted to encourage settlement, so that
communities and farmers would use the trains to ship goods. People and their livestock
needed water, so the railroad stations were placed, if possible, next to streams or lakes.
Forest Lake, Wyoming, Stacy, North Branch, Harris and Rush City all got their start next
to a body of water.
Two months after the railroad opened, the station received a post office from the
federal government and George F. Flanders became the first postmaster.
The establishment of a post office drew new settlers to the young town. Frank
Pratt, a Civil War veteran and former newspaper editor built a one-story general store in
partnership with George Flanders, who became its clerk. Soon North Branch had three
houses, a blacksmith shop, a hotel and a bar. Many early residents came from the town of
Sunrise, six miles east of North Branch. They had come to Minnesota from upper New
York State, hoping that Sunrise would grow. The new railroad of 1870 that bypassed the
town was a blow to its big-time dreams. These people had “Yankee” names like
“Wilkes,”, “Ingalls” and “Guerney.” Other early North Branchers came from New
England and New Jersey. One businessman, John Swenson, came from Sweden at the age
of two and grew up in Center City.
North Branch incorporated in 1881. This meant, among other things, that the town
could form a city council, pass ordinances and levy taxes to improve roads, sidewalks and
other aspects of town life. In 1881, North Branch boasted of two good hotels, a boarding
house, two grain elevators, a sawmill, a three-story “flouring” mill, a tin shop, four
general stores and a warehouse. It had 149 families that lived in 139 houses. A visitor to
the town remarked on the many trees—oaks and maples—that shaded yards and roads.
North Branch also had a reputation as a fishing and hunting paradise: passenger pigeons,
ducks and geese, deer, trout, bass and northern pike were plentiful
In the 1880’s, large numbers of Swedes left their country, driven out by crop
failures and starvation. Many settled in southern Chisago County and in the North Branch
area and became farmers. With the immigration of the Swedes, names like “Oleson,”
“Rystrom” and “Bergh” began appearing in North Branch’s business district. North
Branch also had a sizeable German population, bearing names like “Schmidt” and
“Krueger.”
Like other farmers in Minnesota’s early days, North Branch farmers at first
planted wheat as a cash crop. The grain didn’t do well in east central Minnesota. Wheat
was often plagued by insects and it exhausted the soil. It also required expensive
machinery to harvest it. North Branch farmers needed a different way to make money.
In 1886, a man known as “the Potato King” in Minneapolis, Samuel H. Hall,
bought 150 railroad carloads of potatoes raised in the North Branch area. The farmers had
discovered that the sandplain’s light, sandy soil drained well and warmed quickly in the
spring—ideal conditions for potatoes.
2
Potatoes were the staple of American diets and the farmers found welcoming
markets for their crop. Some of the potatoes were shipped to Minneapolis, St. Paul and
Duluth, but many more were shipped to the even bigger cities of St. Louis and Kansas
City. Grocers in those cities sent men to North Branch to buy up the farmers’ potatoes
and arrange to ship them south on the railroad. These buyers lived in North Branch’s
hotels and boarding houses. They inspected each new wagonload of potatoes brought to
town, paid the farmers an agreed-on price per bushel, and loaded up the railroad cars. In
the winter, the buyers rode in the cars with the potatoes and tended a small stove, so the
potatoes wouldn’t freeze.
Some numbers tell us that potatoes were a very big business for North Branch: in
1893, Hall Grocery handled a million and a half bushels of potatoes. Farmers in Isanti
and Chisago Counties together earned a million dollars from potato sales. North Branch
had 14 buyers buying potatoes that year. The new weighing house built alongside the
tracks (about where the community parking lot is now) weighed between 250-500
wagonloads each day. Other towns along the railroad—Wyoming, Stacy, Harris and Rush
City—also grew large potato crops. Isanti and Chisago Counties became known as the
“Potato Belt” and North Branch was called “Potato City” (or, “Pot-8-O City”!)
The buyers were only interested in big, beautiful tubers for the table. Farmers sold
their little, runty potatoes to another business: the starch factory. In 1889, an Anoka man,
Reuel L. Hall built a starch factory in North Branch and another in Harris. He already
owned starch factories in Anoka and Monticello. Mr. R. Hall took on a business partner,
H.F. Thomas, a Minneapolis businessman and the operation was known as the HallThomas Starch Factory. Four years later, North Branch’s business men and farmers
joined forces to open a second factory, the Farmer’s Starch Factory. Both factories were
located on the Sunrise River, about where Pederson Trailer Court is today. Starch
factories needed a source of water to wash potatoes. They also used the river as a sewer,
to dispose of waste.
Starch factories took small or excess potatoes, washed them, ground them up and
recovered the starch from the tuber. When dried, the white, powdery starch was bagged
and shipped out by train. It was used by textile mills in the east to stiffen cotton and linen
fabric.
The starch factories were very important to North Branch farmers. If the buyers
offered the farmers too low a price for their potatoes, or if a dry summer had produced
small tubers, they could always sell to the factories and get some money for their crop.
Later, when disease set in, the starch factory was often the only source of income from
potatoes.
The great potato boom lasted about 35 years, from 1885 to about 1920. Several
factors account for its end, all of them connected in some way with disease.
3
Potatoes are susceptible to many diseases, some affecting the plant, some the
tuber itself. Late Blight is caused by a fungus. Potatoes infected with late blight rotted in
storage. Late Blight caused the Great Potato Famine in Ireland in 1846 that starved one
and a half million Irish and lead to a mass migration to America.
Another disease is scab. Potatoes infected with scab have ugly skins. Starch
factories could use scabby potatoes, but buyers looking for potatoes for the table
wouldn’t buy them. Other diseases had colorful names, like black leg, and black scurf.
All of these overwintered in the soil and in the warehouses used to store potatoes. Once a
potato-growing area had potato disease, it was doomed. Farmers could push back the
doom by growing potatoes in virgin soil that was free of disease, but they soon ran out of
“new ground.”
Some farmers gave up potato growing and went into dairy farming. To be
successful, they needed to grow alfalfa, a nutritious hay for cows. North Branch’s sandy
soil needed lime added to it to grow good alfalfa—but potatoes didn’t grow well in soil
that had been limed. Once farmers were committed to dairy farming and had limed their
fields, the door was closed on future large-scale potato production.
At about the same time that North Branch farmers were making the big switch
from potatoes to milk cows, the town experienced another important change: State
Highway 61 was built connecting the Twin Cities and Duluth, the third link between the
two major urban areas. The new highway, built for “new-fangled” automobiles that were
immediately popular, ran parallel to the railroad for much of the way. People could now
drive their own cars into the Cities, and they did. Ridership on the train trickled to almost
nothing. Passenger service was drastically cut back in the 1950’s. The U.S. Postal
Service, which had delivered the mail to North Branch via the railroad for over 80 years,
switched to trucks at about the same time. Trains still roared through North Branch, but
they were less and less likely to stop.
In 1958, the state highway department announced that an interstate freeway would
be constructed along the western edge of Chisago County, just beyond the town’s limits.
The new freeway would be fourth time the Twin Cities and Duluth had been joined by a
transportation route. North Branch had benefited in the past from the linkage. The city
council began preparing for the changes that the new road would bring by establishing a
planning commission to manage the growth in business and population the freeway was
expected to bring to town.
In 1969 the freeway to Duluth was completed and the governor of Minnesota,
Harold Levander was on hand to celebrate its opening. North Branch’s 1,000 school
children walked from the elementary school to the freeway bridge to participate in the
festivities and the Midsummer’s Queen cut the ribbon with a giant pair of scissors to
open the new road.
North Branch was already expanding in population before the freeway opened.
More people had moved into town in the 1950’s than in the 40 years before. More than
4
half worked outside of North Branch and some even worked as far away as the Twin
Cities. When the freeway opened, these trends picked up steam.
From its very beginning as a small railroad station on the banks of the Sunrise
River, North Branch’s destiny has been influenced by the nearby Twin Cities. What its
future will be depends on how its citizens shape that influence, what they value, and how
they put those values into action.
Sources:
The North Branch Review 1891—1969
Bjornson, V. 1969. The History of Minnesota, Vol 1. West Palm Beach, Fla: Lewis
Historical Publishing Co. 964pp
Blegen, T.C. 1975. Minnesota: A History of the State. Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press. 731pp
Hackl, L. 1999. “George W. Flanders Memoirs” in Heritage (18:2), Chisago County
Historical Society. pp 4-9.
Malmquist, Max. 2002. Personal communication.
Stirling, Sherry. 2002. Chisago County Historical Society. Personal communication.
White, H.M. 1981. “North Branch Celebrates 100 Years” in Dalles Visitor 1981.
Wovcha, D.S., Delaney, B.C. and G.L. Nordquist. 1995. Minnesota’s St. Croix River
Valley and Anoka Sandplain. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. 234pp.
Sue Leaf is a freelance writer living in Center City, Minnesota. She is currently at work
on a book on North Branch and the Anoka Sandplain.
5