Fifty Years In The Northwest / With An Introduction And Appendix Containing Reminiscences, Incidents And Notes

by William H. C. Folsom

Was established in 1884. A. D. Andrews, president; C. H. Keys, secretary.

FIRES.

In 1875 the Metropolitan Hotel, costing $15,000, and other buildings were burned; loss $30,000. The insurance was light. In 1876 a large portion of the town was destroyed by fire.

RIVER FALLS CITY.

River Falls was incorporated as a city in 1885. At the first election for city officers, held April 7th, three hundred and nineteen votes were cast, and the following persons were declared duly elected to the positions named: Mayor, A. A. Andrews; treasurer, G. E. Pratt; assessor, E. H. Daniel; aldermen, First ward, W. W. Wadsworth; Second ward, L. M. Rosenquist; Third ward, R. N. Jenson; Fourth ward, L. Styles; marshal, R. N. Bevens; city clerk, Allen H. Weld. The license for the sale of intoxicants was fixed at $200. The population of River Falls in 1886 was 1,700. It is a lively, prosperous city, planned on a liberal scale, with wide streets, well shaded with ornamental trees. The mills have reservations by which they are separated from the business part of the city. The beauty of the original waterfalls is somewhat marred by the mills and their debris. Originally they were very beautiful and picturesque, and were widely celebrated, and much visited by the lovers of Nature. Of these falls there are four, two on the south branch, one on the north branch, and one some rods below the junction of the two streams. The falls were not noted for their grandeur, but rather for their quiet beauty, the water falling over ledges but a few feet in height, and so broken in two of them as to present the general appearance of a succession of stairs, or steps, of unequal elevation, over which the water falls. An interesting feature at the junction of the two rivers is the cave in which the pioneer settler, Judge Joel Foster, with his negro boy, spent the winter of 1848-49. From his cave cabin he had full view of the falls on the two streams, no less beautiful in their winter dress of gleaming icicles, with the frost-whitened boughs of the willow and alder drooping over them, than in their summer brightness. The judge has told me that he loved, almost worshiped, this spot. The cave cabin stood about one hundred feet from the sparkling stream. There, in the early morning, he could cast his line, and have for his regal breakfast the speckled trout. Above him towered a precipice crowned with evergreen trees, and around him, on the borders of the streams, were the elm and maple, and an undergrowth of alder and birch. There certainly could have been no fairer scene in the West. To-day no traces remain of the old cave cabin. The Junction mills have effaced the more beautiful and poetic features of the scene. The judge has passed away, and found a grave on an elevation overlooking his old home and the scenes he loved so well. The judge, although a friend to progress, and active in advancing the material interests of the locality in which he lived, was unalterably opposed to the movement to incorporate River Falls, and did all he could to defeat the measure. When the incorporative act had been passed, he moved outside of the city limits, declaring that he would neither live nor die within them; but having been fatally injured by an accident, he was brought back to his old home, and died within the city.

THE FOURTH STATE NORMAL SCHOOL AT RIVER FALLS—HISTORY.

The constitution of the State, adopted in 1848, provides "that the revenue of the school fund shall be exclusively applied to the following objects:

"First—To the support and maintenance of common schools in each school district, and the purchase of suitable libraries and appurtenances therefor.

"Second—That the residue of the income of the school fund shall be appropriated to the support of academies and normal schools, and suitable libraries and appurtenances therefor."

No effort was made to take advantage of this provision of the constitution for the endowment of normal schools until 1857, when an act was passed providing "that the income of twenty-five per cent of the proceeds arising from the sale of swamp and overflowed lands should be appropriated to normal institutes and academies, under the supervision and direction of a 'board of regents of normal schools,'" who were to be appointed in pursuance of the provisions of that act. Under this law, the income placed at the disposal of the regents was distributed for several years to such colleges, academies and high schools as maintained a normal class, and in proportion to the number of pupils in the class who passed satisfactory examinations, conducted by an agent of the board.