The History of Louisville Township Part 3: Merriam Junction

Merriam Junction train tracks with the train station visible in the distance, date unknown. Scott County Historical Society collection.

Like Louisville, Merriam Junction was located in the northwestern part of Louisville Township, near the present-day site of the Renaissance Festival. From its onset, the community was conceived as a transportation hub. It was located at the crossing of two major railroad lines—the Minneapolis and St. Louis Railroad and the St. Paul and Sioux City. The crossing was an active transfer point for regional travelers.

The community itself was not surveyed until 1866, at the behest of the rail companies. The first structures built were not stores or farm buildings, but a train depot and a rail agent’s house belonging to the St. Paul and Sioux City Railroad. Because the two lines running through the junction were competitors, a second depot for the Minneapolis and St. Louis Railroad was built about a mile away. It wasn’t until 1878 when the original depot burned down that the two companies finally reached an agreement to share a single structure. 

The Merriam Junction train station, date unknown. Scott County Historical Society collection.

Because Merriam was a major crossing point, a community soon sprang up around the rail buildings. A store opened, along with two hotels—one in 1879 and one in 1881. Both hotel buildings were two-story, wood-framed buildings. The hotels provided meals for those with short layovers and a place to stay overnight for travelers with longer delays. A water tower and coal bin were also built for the settlement, useful for resupplying steam engines. A post office opened in 1872, run by H. H. Spencer, the former promoter of Louisville. Like Louisville, this post office was unfortunately short-lived, closing in 1873. 

Julius Coller described Merriam Junction in his book The Shakopee Story, published in 1960. He said, “It was quite the little settlement. The businesses were largely patronized by traveling people and people working for the railroad.” He also described the outsized impact that Merriam Junction had on the region: “Shakopee became a way station with a stub train consisting of an engine, a baggage car, and coach running from St Paul to Merriam and return. Travelers had to change trains at Merriam to make the 12 mile trip from Shakopee to Jordan” 

At the community’s height, an average of 20 trains went through Merriam Junction each day. With such a high rate of mobility in the population, Merriam developed a local reputation for being home to transitory communities. The area was home to a group of Eastern European immigrants, called gypsies at the time. Supposedly they camped near the waystation because the water tower and coal bins provided easy access to fuel and fresh water. Local residents at the time also complained that they would beg, or come to local houses in an attempt to buy food. Unfortunately, this small group of families took on a negative, almost legendary status in households at the time. Children would be warned that they would be taken by the “gypsies” if they were naughty, and unsubstantiated tales of stolen livestock abounded. 

Merriam Junction was also chosen as a hideout for the nationally notorious James Brothers gang. After their famous robbery at the Northfield Bank, the gang hid out in a cave near Merriam, supposedly obscuring their tracks by putting their horses’ shoes on backward. Some members of the gang, the younger brothers of Jesse James, were captured after this incident.

Though the train spelled disaster for Louisville, the rise of the automobile led to the end of Merriam Junction. Even though trains were still being used for shipping and distance travel, by the 1920s, shorter-distance trips for business and pleasure were being taken by automobile instead of rail. Passengers no longer needed the services of a community like Merriam Junction, and the hotels and stores, reliant on travelers, lost their customers. By the end of the 1920s, Merriam Junction, like Louisville before it, was mostly deserted. 

Further Reading

• Coller, J. (1976). The Shakopee Story. North Star Pictures, Inc. Available to look at in the SCHS research library.

• Stanwood, M. (2017, October 19). “A Chance for Beginners”: Ghost Towns of the Southwest Metro. Swnewsmedia. https://www.swnewsmedia.com/eden_prairie_news/news/local/a-chance-for-beginners-ghost-towns-of-the-southwest-metro/article_d9645265-06d1-5fd5-9b10-447998297792.html

History of St Lawrence Township Part 3: The Downfall of St Lawrence

The Downfall of the Village of St Lawrence 

St Lawrence’s glory days were short. In 1866 plans for the railroad were laid out. The route did not include St Lawrence, instead passing just over a mile south of the community and stopping in Jordan and Belle Plaine instead. Rail quickly surpassed steamships as the primary method of travel and shipping in Scott County, and St Lawrence was rendered obsolete. As the Belle Plaine Herald put it in June of 1925, “The village was foredoomed to failure. Bands of steel were pushing westward and within a few years the railroad came down the valley, seriously crippling river and stage traffic.” According to a 1996 Belle Plaine Herald article, the village of St Lawrence was all but abandoned by 1869. 

Former blacksmith shop of St Lawrence turned schoolhouse. Date unknown. Published in the Prior Lake American, October 5. 1987

By the 1920s, few of the original buildings from the town of St Lawrence remained. In 1925, the St Lawrence Hotel was part of the farm of E. J Liebbrand. Liebbrand used the building as a granary and storehouse for his tools. The former blacksmith shop was being used as the township’s schoolhouse. 

In 1958 a fire destroyed the hotel, and the former blacksmith shop, now relieved of its school duties, was torn down for safety reasons. Today the only building that remains from the original building is the original limestone home of Horace Strait. 

St Lawrence Township Continues 

An end of the village did not mean that the township was abandoned. St Lawrence boasted excellent farmland, and continued to to be home to many farms and families. 

Faye Libbrand was born in St Lawrence in 1926. She remembers that the “St Lawrence Farmers Club” that was established in the original village continued well into the 1900s. She also recalls a sense of community in the township: “Once a year we had a big picnic. It was one of the social highlights of the township. And there was lots of visiting in those days. People worked together with their neighbors. At harvesting, men would work in the fields, and women worked together in the houses. Kids had it pretty good on those days.” She remembered a township meeting being held once a month. Guest speakers and politicians would be invited, schoolchildren would give recitations, and local musicians would show off their talents. She also said “...afterwards we had buttermilk and donuts. You know, I hate buttermilk.”

Clara Frank was born in the township in 1896. She attended school in St Lawrence, got her teaching certificate in Shakopee, then returned to teach at the St Lawrence school. She recalls “You didn’t have much time [due to the busy farming schedule], but the kids learned a lot in those days.”