By Charles Pederson
Welcome! Happily, you have landed on Part 2 of three parts, this time about the unusual election of Elizabeth Ries and her action-filled career as Shakopee mayor. If you missed Part 1, about Prior Lake mayor Cora McQuestion, you can still read it by clicking the link.
Elizabeth Ries
Cora McQuestion accumulated accomplishments as mayor of Prior Lake. But the mayoral role really came to fruition with the long political life and strange election of Elizabeth Ries of Shakopee.
Born 1874, Elizabeth Ries was one of 13 children of a prominent Shakopee family. Her father had founded Jacob Ries Bottling Works, a successful beverage company. Ries became interested in politics at an early age, being involved in parish business at Saint Mark’s parochial school, Shakopee. An obituary in the Shakopee Argus stated that she was a fund-raiser for and contributor to various church causes. She led many activities in support of the troops during World War I.
As a young woman, Ries received training as a nurse in order to take care of her ailing mother. “It was in 1918 that her previous training as a nurse became invaluable,” reported Shakopee chronicler Julius Coller. “When the influenza scourge came, only a few nurses were available, and she gave her services and was in demand night and day.”
Elizabeth Ries, Shakopee mayor, was influential in Shakopee political and social life. Courtesy of Scott County Historical Society.
Ries’s father, Jacob, had served as mayor in the late 1890s. It might have been expected that Ries would follow in his footsteps. She did win the election of April 1925, though not through any effort of her own. By the last day of filing, Ries still had not registered her candidacy. It was widely, and reasonably, assumed that the only registered candidate, John Ring, would be the unchallenged winner.
During the week between the filing deadline and election day itself, however, “a number of [Ries’s] friends decided at the eleventh hour to endeavor to elect her by having stickers with her name printed thereon, placed in the hands of the voters,” reported the Shakopee Argus. As Coller noted, “almost without knowing about it,” Ries won the election, defeating Ring by a total of 29 votes out of 609 cast. It’s unknown how many of those voters might have been women, but it's heartwarming to think that a number voted for her, not as a novelty but as companions in the struggle for women to be recognized as persons in their own right.
No matter how strange her election, Ries reveled in her new role. Some of her activity was ceremonial, such as opening the 1926 annual Scott County Farm Bureau/Independence Day picnic on the 150th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. Some activities were political, such as procuring funding to construct the elegant iron Holmes Street Bridge across the Minnesota River, opening a direct route to the north side of the river and the Twin Cities. Some activities combined the ceremonial and political, such as “obtain[ing] the routing of several important highways through this city, and [arranging] for the installation of a new ‘white way’ [electric street lighting] in this city next spring,” according to the Minneapolis Sunday Tribune.
The Holmes Street bridge, built 1927 (under construction, above), was an important achievement for Ries. It opened a direct roadway to the Twin Cities. Courtesy of the Scott County Historical Society.
The rare deck-truss span was closed to traffic in 2005. The structure is on the National Register of Historic Places. Courtesy of the Minnesota Department of Transportation.
Perhaps the apex of Ries’s time in office was in 1927. A determined bloc of Jordan business and civic leaders had organized to move the county seat from Shakopee to Jordan. A second group was agitating to move the seat to Lydia. To keep the county seat in Shakopee, Ries built a large coalition of Shakopee business leaders. They hoped to preserve the economic benefits accruing to a county seat. Ries and her faction were successful, and Shakopee retained the courthouse and other county functions. (See “Hey, That’s My [County] Seat,” Part 1 and Part 2, for a lively account of the decades-long attempt to wrest the center of county power away from Shakopee.)
In 1926 Ries even appeared on Minnesota radio broadcaster WCCO with the “Lady Mayor’s Trio,” a Shakopee singing group. She went on air to describe her fiscal agenda, which she dubbed the “Kitchen Economy.” She appealed to women by describing “how she has been trying to conduct the affairs of her municipality in the same manner in which she believes a good wife should operate her kitchen,” said the Minneapolis Sunday Tribune.
Proving that she was not just a flash in the proverbial pan, Ries was reelected as mayor in 1927. And in mid-1928 she was appointed postmaster, resigning as mayor to take the post, in which she served for 8 years.
Ries was tough not only politically but also physically. In one incident, she was shaken up and hurt in a three-car accident. On the road one day, her car was hit by another vehicle, which sped off. A third car, coming down the hill, also crashed into Ries’s vehicle. The first driver was sought, but it’s unclear whether they were found. Ries, though bruised, was still able to function as mayor.
Interior of Rock Springs Café. Elizabeth Ries is at right. Courtesy of Scott County Historical Society.
Ries’s vigor made her a celebrity locally and as far afield as Minneapolis. She was even mentioned in the Los Angeles Spanish-language newspaper La Opinión. The article commented on a female winning an election, although with a touch of condescension: “Members of the Shakopee, Minnesota, city council can pass all the regulations they want, but Mrs. Elizabeth K. Ries, mayor of the city, will put on the coffee. Mrs. Ries, considering how little she has to do in her position, has planned to open a restaurant near the mayor's office.”*
The restaurant in question was the Rock Spring Café, which Ries took over from her father in 1927. Turtle’s Bar and Grill, at the corner of First Avenue East and Lewis Street, today occupies the site of the cafe.
Elizabeth Ries was a local celebrity whose fame spread far beyond Shakopee. Spanish-language newspaper La Opinión, in Los Angeles, carried a blurb about her mayoral victory. Courtesy of La Opinión.
After leaving political life, Ries continued as a respected community figure. She was known as an excellent hostess and as a friend to those in need. At the end of her life, an Argus article reported that Ries, “former mayor, postmaster, and philanthropist,” died at home on May 6, 1949, of apparent heart disease. The article further declared that Ries “was held in high regard in all walks of life[, . . .] attested to by the vast numbers who came to her home and the church to pay their last respects.”
We hope you’re enjoying this fascinating article about local female political life in the 1920s. The final chapter, Part 3, returns next week with the thought-provoking conclusion of the story, and the meaning behind it all.
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