Brick by Brick, the Blakeley Brickyards

The Blakeley area of Scott County is a beautiful area to visit and explore, but one of the things hidden away in this corner of the county is a history that helped build Minnesota

Ed Wards Brickyard from 1890s

 and the country as we know it today. This region of our county was once home to a thriving business of brick making. These bricks, formed from local clay and fired right here in Scott County would be loaded on trains by the ton to be used in buildings in the County,  Twin Cities, and across the county.

The late 19th Century saw a boom in construction across the country, industry was starting to take hold a main player in the American economy and the demands of the growing country required bricks to build factories, houses, and all manner of other construction. From the 1860s through the early 1910s the Blakeley area, including Belle Plaine, operated six different brickyards at various times through the period. At the peak of their production, this region of no more than 5 miles was producing nearly 60,000-70,000 bricks per day.

One of the first brickyards in the area was opened by I. N. Dean, the founder of Blakeley, in 1870. The brickyard employed dozens of men throughout the season and many made their way through the winter by helping prepare for the next season by cutting timber. The largest of the brick kilns in the area measured in at 35 feet long and 20 feet high, it was powered by cotton wood that was typically cut the winter beforehand.

The region had several brickyards which operated  throughout the years, the major yards were: Wiest and Daugs, Mierbachtol, Ed Ward’s, Peter Becker’s, Jacob Krenz’s, and Dean’s Yard. Dean’s would eventually be bought out in 1882 by A. Wiese and operated by Sam Kahn until it closed in 1914. These brickyards produced different kinds of bricks which served several purposes. Bricks made from yellow and blue clays created bricks useful for interior construction, while red or crème colored bricks served as exterior materials. Becker’s and Krenz’s produced crème and red bricks respectively with the rest producing mainly interior brick.

When all six yards were in production they employed between 200-300 people, and the average wages for a brickyard worker in the late 1800s was around 15 cents an hour. Brickmaking requires particular conditions, though, and production would shut down if it rained or when winter came. Many of the workers that didn’t migrate for the winter, would be employed to cut timber for the kilns for the coming season. An entire winter would be required to cut enough wood to feed the massive kilns. The kilns themselves would be firing 24 hours a day with people watching it constantly to ensure it maintained the required temperature. The bricks were made from a mix of sand, water, and clay and pressed into forms to be fired.

The brick business was booming in Scott County toward the end of the 19th century, orders in the range of 2 million bricks were being submitted annually from construction firms in the St. Paul and Minneapolis with others coming from as far away as New York. Many of the bricks which came out of Belle Plaine and Blakeley went into building some of the first brick buildings in the area, especially in Belle Plaine itself. Beginning in the 1860s, the Blakeley region and Belle Plaine were churning out bricks at blinding speed, but the 1890s would see a fast decline to the once booming industry.

In 1893, the country would experience a sudden and deep depression, the Panic of 1893. The economy would recover within a few short years, and it would be nothing compared to the depression which would come forty years later. Still, the Panic had driven many businessmen to halt construction of building and the demand for brick quickly began to fade. In 1894, Peter Becker’s yard for example had a surplus of over 2 million bricks due to canceled orders. The other brickyards in the area experienced similar hardships. Daugs and Wiest cut the cost of their bricks in half from $6 per brick to $3, but the writing was on the wall. Mierbachtol Brickyard was the first to close its doors from the decline in 1894, followed by Ed Ward’s and Daugs and Wiest the following year. The Becker yard continued for a few more years, with Jacob Krenz having closed in the late 1880s. The yard owned by A. Wiese, the first brickyard built in the area of Blakeley, did not close until 1914.

The late 19th Century was the height of brick making in Blakeley, and the area had a host of dedicated and quality yards. Producing between 60,000-70,000 bricks per day at the peak of production, the region helped built the state and the country at large. Unfortunately, like many industries at the time, the Panic of 1893 saw the end of the boom of construction and with it the decline of our local brickyards. While the yards closed in the late 1890s and some a little later, the bricks they produced can still be found in some old buildings today. What better testament to their quality and the hard work that produced them than to still be standing over a century later.

How to Make a Brick

Looking around Shakopee, you see many buildings made of an iconic reddish brick. These structures were made from bricks manufactured at Schroeder Brickyard. The Schroeder Brick and Lime Manufacturing Company was founded in 1876 by Herman Schroeder, a German immigrant. The business stayed in the family until it ceased operation in 1941. Shakopee and neighboring communities were adding buildings rapidly in the late 1800s. This coupled with the fact that shipping heavy brick was a costly endeavor guaranteed a steady demand for locally made bricks.

Canvas advertisement for Schroeder Brick Manufacturing. From the SCHS collections.

The Schroeder Brickyard was located just east of downtown Shakopee along the Minnesota River. The location possessed all the components needed for a successful brick-making operation- a large accessible supply of high quality clay, wood to fuel the kilns and steam engines, a willing workforce, and close proximity to a growing community. 

Brick-making was an outdoor activity, and was limited to warmer months of the year. When the temperature dropped below freezing, the bricks could not dry properly before firing. During the icy winters the workers at the brickyard were forced to find other employment, or were left without work during the hardest time of the year. Production at Schroeder Brickyard was labor intensive. Bricks were created using a five step process, and a mixture of human, equine and steam power.

Workers at Becker Brickworks in Belle Plaine, 1895. Photo from the SCHS collections.

1) Mining (Winning) the Clay
Workers excavated clay using shovels, buckets and a horse-drawn scraper. Large clay and sand deposits were essential for an successful brickyard. The clay and sands of the Minnesota River Valley were deposited here over 10,000 years ago during glaciation of the region. During glacial runoff, the heavy clay was left behind in depressions called kettle holes. 

2) Preparation of the Clay
Sometimes the clay was “weathered” or aged for a year before it was used. The seasonal process of freezing and thawing helped break up the clay, and rain washed salt and other impurities from the clay. After the weathering process, the clay was mixed with sand and water in a large circular open pit using a huge horse-driven wheel. The type of clay found in the area determined the color of the brick. 

3) Molding of the Bricks
Bricks were traditionally formed by hand by packing clay into wooden molds. By the 1870, brick-making machines had become more common. The machine used by the Schroeder Brickyard at its opening used steam to pack brick molds with tempered clay.

Photo of a Shakopee Brick, taken 1967. Photo from the SCHS collections.

This technology increased production from one to eighty bricks per minute. About one out of every 100 bricks that came from Schroeder Brickyard was stamped with the iconic “Shakopee”. 

4) Drying the Bricks
After the bricks were formed, they were stacked under roofed, open drying sheds for one to two weeks. Proper drying was needed to ensure a uniform shape and strength. There were ten rows of sheds on the Schroeder site able to hold approximately 100,000 bricks. The structure of the sheds provided both air circulation and rain protection. 

Ruins of a kiln, possibly for lime, at Schroeder Brickworks taken in 1967. Photo from the SCHS collections.

5) Firing the Bricks
A simple roofed updraft kiln was used to fire the bricks. Freshly dried bricks were  carefully stacked in the kiln so that small perpendicular tunnels ran through the rows of bricks. Fires were then set in these tunnel openings, curing the bricks as heat rose up through the stacks. Temperatures between 1600 degrees and 2000 degrees Fahrenheit needed to be maintained for seven to ten days to properly fire the bricks. Constantly tending the fires that heated these kilns was a tedious job. 

Today, we have a variety of bricks from the Schroeder brickyards, and other brick factories around the county in the SCHS collections. The processes and labor of brick making has changed throughout the years, but you can still see thousands of the iconic red Schroeder bricks making up the walls of Shakopee buildings. 

Written by Rose James, SCHS Program Manager