The History of Louisville Township Part 2: Louisville

Building a Town

Louisville was originally platted by French fur trader Louis LaCroix who established a trading post on the bank of the river, likely in 1850. In 1853, H. H. Spencer arrived from Louisville, Kentucky with his family. He envisioned a community in the northwest corner of the township thriving on steamboat travel and trade along the Minnesota River. Spencer soon began buying up lots. He built a home for his family, a grocery store, and a post office where he established himself as postmaster - and also offered free lots to other tradespeople who were willing to set up shop in the new community. Spencer then began working to recoup his investment, and make the town a financial success. Soon, he was advertising the prospects of  Louisville in newspapers around the region. 

This lengthy paragraph about Louisville was placed in the Minnesota Democratic Weekly on May 23, 1855: 

“Located on the South Bank of the Minnesota River at the nearest point below the Little Rapids that is above high water, it is about 50 miles above St. Paul, by the river and 34 by land, and 10 or 12 miles by the river and 6 miles by land above Shakopee. Louisville is on a high rolling Prairie, with a number of springs of the best water and an abundance of good limestone in the vicinity. Louisville has a first rate landing for steamboats and is the landing place for that rich expansive country bordering and on the prairie and the big woods, and when the water is low for steamboats to cross the rapids, it is the place for the travellers to and from the Upper Minnesota country to leave the steamboat and take one when bound for st paul, being the principal traveled road from St Paul to St Peter, Fort Ridgley etc. Travellers to the upper country will find teams at Louisville and vicinity to convey them up to this country. Strangers looking for claims can get information of conveyances to a very rich country back unclaimed and well timbered and water interrupted with meadows and beautiful lakes abounding with fish. Louisville has a store and hotel in operation, and a blacksmith shop and several dwelling buildings. Persons looking for liquidations are also invited to visit this place where H. H. Spencer, one of the proprietors, will be found ready and willing to sell property at fair prices. Great induments will be offered to mechanics, merchants etc to settle her this season. The place is laid off on a liberal plan. Lots 50 by 150 foot. Streets and alleys wide, and liberal donations have been made by the proprietors in the way of public grounds for churches and school purposes. ”

— Minnesota Democratic Weekly on May 23, 1855

Another example is this advertisement, published in the Daily Minnesotan Newspaper, November 1st, 1854: 

“A new town is to be laid out on the Minnesota River, some 15 miles above Shakopee. A saw mill, warehouse, and a large hotel are to be erected this fall and early in the return of spring. Enterprising gentlemen from New York and Wisconsin have recently made purchases at the place, and will be on with their families in spring. A friend of ours in the section says we in St Paul can have no real conception of the rapidity with which this whole upper country is being filled up with immigrants. He estimated that no less than six thousand settlers have gone in above Shakopee since the opening of navigation last spring. This village is situated on the south side of the Minnesota at the foot of the little rapids. The town is going ahead- keeping pace with other thriving villages of the valley.  Mr. H. H. Spencer is one of the proprietors and he has set up business on the spot. He took up by the Black Hawk yesterday several families to settle there, and lumber to build them houses. The land in the vicinity is excellent, and the country is rapidly filling up.”

— Daily Minnesotan Newspaper, November 1st, 1854

As a result of this campaign, around 30 families moved to the settlement.

A section of the obituary for J.W. Sencerbox, printed in the Scott County Argus, January 16, 1896

Building up Business

In 1856, Spencer built a gristmill in Louisville. Later that year, two steam mills were constructed, one by Ezra Gibbs, and one by J. W. Sencerbox. Both mills were operated by steam, as the Minnesota River was too placid at the townsite to provide enough power to operate a mill. Neither mill was destined for a long life, however. Gibbs’ business was unprofitable from the onset, and closed within the year. Sencerbox’s mill only lasted four years, closing its doors in 1865. 

In 1857, Spencer put down the funds to have a schoolhouse built in the town. A teacher, Hattie Kingsly, was brought on board. However, a 1937 article in the Jordan Independent describes the grim future of the schoolhouse thus: “An interest in education did not take in Louisville and from 1859 to 1863 the schoolhouse stood idle. Summer school was conducted in the next two years, and in winter of 1865-1866 Miss Belle Spencer held classes, but they were the last for Louisville”

Louisville never established a church, often a bedrock of early European American settlements in the area. Services were only held intermittently by circuit riders, usually in the home of H. H. Spencer. 

The Decline of Louisville

In this period of history, rail could make or break a fledgling town. Trains brought goods and supplies, as well as convenient shipping lanes for local farmers and merchants. They also brought new people to settle and expand local communities.

Soon after Louisville was constructed, shipping and travel began to move from steamboats to the more convenient rail lines. Louisville’s death was foretold when the St Paul and Sioux City railroad was mapped out. It bypassed Louisville entirely, traveling from Shakopee to Jordan, and crossing with the Minneapolis and St Louis railroad line at a point called Merriam Junction.  Farmers in the area began to take their goods and business elsewhere. 

In spite of his hearty publicity campaign, Spencer’s interest in the town soon began to wane. He closed his original grocery store in 1859. By the end of the 1860s, the town was nearly deserted. 

Railroads in Louisville Township. Photo from the Shakopee Valley News, September 16, 1987.

The History of Louisville Township Part 1: Louisville Then and Now

Map showing Louisville Township, including Louisville Swamp.

Beginnings of Louisville Township

Louisville Township is located in the northwestern corner of Scott County, boarded by the twists and turns of the Minnesota River. The natural landscape is varied, including prairies, forest, marsh and swampland, an oak savanna. Like most parts of Scott County, the Louisville Township area was originally settled by the Dakota, thousands of years before European Americans came to the area. The area was home to the Eastern Wahpeton band of the Dakota. 

In 1930, a priest named Father Klien wrote a lengthy and detailed history of his church in Marystown in Louisville Township and the surrounding area. In his discussion of early census attempts, he wrote “The reported census did not measure up to the actual number of people”, and that “The territory was recognized as the legitimate domain of the Dakota”.

He goes on to describe the rapid change brought to Louisville Township by the 1851 Treaty of Traverse De Sioux. Like in other parts of Scott County, “settlers began to pour in from the Midwest, East, Germany, Ireland...drawn here by the chance to get good farms with what little money they possessed”

The history of Louisville Township is intertwined with the history of transportation in the region. Along with connections to Shakopee and Jordan due to proximity, the township was home to three European American towns. Two of these, Louisville and and Merriam Junction, grew and died along with transportation changes. 

Louisville was planned as a port city along the Minnesota River, taking advantage of steam travel. Merriam Junction was placed at the crossing of two major railroads, hoping to benefit from rail travelers. A third community, Marystown, sprung up around one of the oldest catholic churches in the region. 

Newspaper article showing the H.H. Spencer home which was the only structure still standing. “Spencer used it as living quarters, store and inn.” The man in the photo is August Holm who was one of the last Scott County residents who could remember going to Louisville. Jordan Independent July 8, 1937

Louisville Township Today

One of the most well-known yearly events in Louisville Township is the Minnesota Renaissance Festival. 

The first Renaissance Festival was held in Laurel Canyon, California in 1963. It was started by a local teacher who wanted to create an experience to share history with adults, modeled after the medieval fairs she would put on with her students each year. As the years progressed, the fair attracted members of the 1960s counterculture movement, and became less about historical authenticity and more about theater and community. 

As the Renaissance Festival expanded, people in other states began to take interest. Minnesota was home to the first festival outside of California, which took place in September of 1971 on a 22-acre field in Jonathan, Minnesota. It billed itself as “A Celebration of Nature, Art and Life,” and brought in over 25,000 people. 

The Renaissance Festival moved to its current location in Louisville Township in 1973. Today, it is the largest Renaissance Festival in the United States, attracting over 300,000 visitors yearly. It has launched the acts of nationally known performers, including Penn and Teller and the Flying Karamazov brothers. Singer Jason Mraz also had his first job at the Minnesota Renaissance Festival, selling pickles.

Another Louisville Township attraction is Louisville Swamp. Louisville Swamp is currently part of the Minnesota Valley National Wildlife Refuge, located between the Minnesota River and Highway 169. It was purchased by the US Fish and Wildlife Service in 1979 from Northern States Power Company. 

Newspaper article quoting Ranger McDonald on the attraction of the wildlife refuge at Louisville Swamp. Savage Pacer, October 31, 1998.

The title of “Swamp” is actually a misnomer, as the land includes prairies, forest, marshland, and oak savanna. The oak savanna is especially important. There were once an estimated 300 million acres of oak savannah in the United States. As of 1998, only 6500 acres remained. The area is important for local wildlife. It is a prime spot for birders, with sightings of hawks, kestrels and woodpeckers. Deer, raccoon, coyotes and walleye live in the park, and in the fall it is a resting place for migrating monarch butterflies. There has been an active effort to preserve native plants and reduce invasive species in Louisville Swamp, making it a home for flowers including the lady slipper and the nut rush. 

The area that is now Louisville Swamp includes parts of the ghost town of Louisville, and you can still see the foundations of several homesteads in the swamp. Hiking paths are open year round - visit the Minnesota Valley National Wildlife Refuge for details. 

History of St Lawrence Township Part 4: The Township Continues

Rip Van Winkle

In 1987, the Prior Lake American described St Lawrence Township as “Rip Van Winkle”. While the Village of St Lawrence had floundered due to transportation concerns, the construction of Highway 169 during the 1950s brought new people and businesses to the quiet farm-focused area. Soon several restaurants sprang up along the highway, as well as some attractions. One of the early attractions, Jim’s Apple Farm, now dominates the highway as Minnesota’s Largest Candy Store. Along with these new businesses and attractions, the population of the township began to increase. 

Another prominent feature in the area is the Minnesota Valley State Recreation Area. The scenic and recreational potential of the area was recognized early on, and the first park was suggested in 1939. In 1967, a bill proposing an 18,000-acre state park along the river in St Lawrence went before the Minnesota Legislature, but it failed to pass. However a bill creating the Minnesota Valley State Trail did pass in 1969. The trail was to run from Fort Snelling State Park to the town of Le Sueur and include six waysides totaling over 5,000 acres. In this roundabout way, portions of the valley were added to the state park system. The Minnesota Valley National Wildlife Refuge was authorized in 1976 and additional lands originally desired for the state park received federal protection.

Minnesota Valley State Recreation Area

Today the Minnesota Valley State Trail runs through the recreation area with both paved and natural sections. Trails are also in place for hiking, biking, cross-country skiing, horseback riding, mountain biking, and snowmobiling. The landscape of the park includes wetlands, floodplain forest and blufftop oak savanna. The park also provides a home for raccoons, mink, muskrat, wood duck, beaver, white-tail deer, rabbits, squirrels, or red and grey fox. 

The Fair and the Threshers

Sunday afternoon at the 1973 Scott County Fair. Photo from the Belle Plaine Herald, August 2 1973

Scott County has hosted a fair since the early days of European American residents. The first fair was held in 1857 with the goal of showcasing the agricultural possibilities of the county and encouraging immigrants to move to the area. Until 1885 the fair was held piecemeal, in the buildings and streets of downtown Shakopee. Then land was purchased just outside of Shakopee, allowing the fair to expand and have a permanent home. In 1915, the fair was held in Jordan for the first time. 

In the early 1970s, the Scott County Fair Board purchased 80 acres in St Lawrence Township to be the new home of the Scott County Fair. Ground was broken, and the fair was held in its new home for the first time in 1973. 

A new cattle barn, horse barn, 4-H building, sanitation facility, and concessions stand were built on site. Four other fair buildings were moved from the old fairgrounds in Jordan. The Fair Board also chartered busses that ran from the fairgrounds to neighboring communities for a cost of forty cents per passenger. 

The big events that year were the horse show, horse pulling contest, 4H auction, demolition derby, tractor pull and chuck wagon races. 

St Lawrence Township is also home to the Scott Carver Threshers and the grounds of their annual Harvest Festival. The first threshing festival held by the group was in 1964, after Ernie Morrell suggested to his nephew Ken Scott that they fire up their grandfather’s engine, hook it to the separator, and see if they could thresh some grain. 

Today, the mission of the group is “to preserve the agricultural and industrial history from the past for the enjoyment and education of the future generations.”  Their annual festival includes displays and demonstrations of steam tractors, engines, threshing, milling, printing, blacksmithing and rug making. 

Gravestones and Ghost Stories 

St Lawrence has a few unusual gravesites. A single headstone is located in Lawrence Wayside, part the Minnesota Valley State Recreation Area. Before becoming park land, the property was part of the Henry Barlage Farm. The grave is for Frances N Strait who died at age 19 on Dec 21 1860. She was the first wife of George Strait, of milling fame, and the two married when she was only 16. It is unknown why she was buried at a remote, isolated location. 

There are also two gravesites on the property of railroad magnate turned farmer Frank Erikson. They are from children who died during the diphtheria epidemic that tore through the county in the 1870s. Clara Frank recalls spending time on the property with her friends in the early 1900s: “I remember when we were children we used to run and play there, but we were always careful not to step on the graves. You never knew what would happen if you stepped on the graves.”

In 2007 a ghost hunter named Kathy visited the Strait house along with a reporter from the Jordan Independent. Kathy asked some questions to any spirits that might be present, including “Are you angry that your house is now a museum”. She thought that she heard a negative response, but the reporter with her didn’t hear anything. She did leave some tape recorders running at the site, and claimed later to have picked up some “evp” or electronic voice phenomena. To ghost hunters, EVP are otherwise inaudible communications from spirits that can be picked up with a tape recorder. The messages were “Repent!”, and the names “Elizabeth” and “Andy Taylor”.

St Lawrence Township Today

Today St Lawrence Township covers 14.9 square miles and has a population approximately 550 people. The township’s board meetings are typically held on the second Thursday of the month at 7 p.m. at the St. Lawrence Town Hall, 7500 Old Highway 169 Boulevard. While the area is still home to farmland, it also has become a place for homeowners who want to live in a rural area and don’t mind having a commute to neighboring towns or the Twin Cities. 

The History of St Lawrence Township Part 1: The Minnesota River

St Lawrence township was originally platted in 1858. The area was nestled up against the Minnesota River, situated between Belle Plaine and Jordan on the Eastern side of Scott County. 

“Gathering Wild Rice”. Painted by Seth Eastman around 1850

The Minnesota River had long been an essential part of transportation for communities in what is now Scott County. Dakota towns along the river had used it for transportation, trade and food. Trade networks branched throughout the continent, facilitated by the Minnesota river and other waterways. Fish were speared in the river, and wild rice was cultivated and harvested in its waters. 

The state is named after the Minnesota river. The Dakota name for the river was “Mnisota”, meaning (roughly) sky-tinted water. When European Americans originally entered the area, they called the river St Peters. In 1852, the US Congress, acting on are request of the MN territorial government, decreed that the river should be “renamed” with it’s Dakota name. 

When European Americans began to resettle the region after the treaties in the early 1850s, they also wanted to live near the river. Rivers were the superhighways of the time, providing conveyance for keelboats, flatboats and, most importantly, steamboats. The first steamboat attempt on the Minnesota River was in June of 1842. The boat made from Fort Snelling to the Dakota town that would later be called Shakopee. This was the first of several expeditions between 1842 and 1850, each reaching farther down the river. Many of these expeditions had the air of a big party. Prominent elected officials and business leaders would be aboard. Copious amounts of drink would be served, and bands played to lighten the mood. 

Steamboat at the Lewis Street Bridge in Shakopee, 1880. Photo from the SCHS Collections.

River travel was essential to early European Americans in Scott County. Settlers, goods, and news came along the Minnesota River via steamboat. Many people came to the area to farm, but the region grew too fast to ever be entirely self- sufficient. Steamboats carried in needed goods and supplies, and later brought goods grown in Scott County to other parts of the nation to be sold. 

St Lawrence was platted and community structures were built with this in mind. The goal was to turn St Lawrence into the premier river port of the area, and capitalize on the Minnesota River and the stagecoach lines that ran alongside it.

Minnesota River Valley: The Beginnings

Excerpt From “Shakopee: An Environmental History” by Kathryn Cravens

The land features seen in the Minnesota River Valley today are largely the result of glaciers that moved across the landscape for millions of years. During the Ice Age, which began about 2 million years ago, large sheets of ice (sometimes up to a mile in thickness) moved across North America. As the glaciers traveled, they picked up and carried with them rocks and soil. During warmer periods, when the glaciers melted and receded, they left behind these rocks, or glacial till. In some places this till is so thick that it forms hills. In other places, the rocks scattered across the landscape are reminders of the glaciers’ former presence

The bulk of Lake Agassiz juxtaposed with the modern Great Lakes and state/national boarders 

Aside from the rocks left behind as glaciers melt, they also shaped the earth in other ways. The sheer weight and movement of the glaciers sculpts the earth into new land forms by creating hills and valleys. Minnesota, including Scott County, is a land of 10,00 lakes because of the glaciers. In many places, buried glacial ice eventually melted and left behind depressions in the earth that became filled with water to create the ponds, wetlands and lakes that define our state’s landscape.

Perhaps the most visible evidence of Scott County’s glacial heritage can be seen by drivers on Highway 169. In open areas, drivers can look to the north and see the bluff line on the other side of the river. Looking south they can see another bluff line. These bluffs mark the original banks of Glacial River Warren.

Glacial River Warren was a product of the last major era of glaciers, known as Wisconsinan Glaciation, which began about 100,000 years ago. About 12,000 years ago, the glaciers had melted significantly and this meltwater formed Lake Agassiz, an enormous body of water larger than all of today’s great lakes combined.

The Minnesota River- shown as a thin blue line above- inserted inside the approximate historical footprint of Glacial River Warren

Beginning around 11,500 years ago, for a time Lake Agassiz drained south through Glacial River Warren. Not surprisingly, a lake the size of Agassiz required an equally impressive outlet river, which is why the banks of Glacial River Warren were so far apart. The Minnesota River is a tiny stream in comparison to what would have been the raging waters of the Warren.

Approximately 8,500 years ago, the drainage form Lake Agassiz shifted back north to Hudson Bay. Today, the north-flowing Red River on the border between Minnesota and North Dakota is all that remains of the large drainage basin that was Lake Agassiz.

Hikers on the MN River Valley State Trail will see many seeps and springs trickling out from the base of the bluff. These springs are important water sources that made settlement and industry possible throughout Scott County.