July 4th       "The Anchorage"        Clamming on the St. Croix River        The Bissell Mounds

Histories of the Afton Area

July 4, 1900...a mental picture...Main Street...Parade...Riding in the first wagon was blacksmith Tony Nord, banging on his anvil; Julius Spreeman with the horn; and a drummer. Gummerson, a Civil War vet and shoemaker, and Long John, the Wolf Saloon keeper, were along for the ride. There was a horse cart race, which Hank Siebold always won because he had the fastest horse. There was a ball game in the cow pasture north of the depot (now Windmill Marina). Tony Hedstrom pitched and Tony Nord caught a 6-7 game against St. Paul Park. Then families returned to picnic in Village Park. The cold beverages tasted good on a warm night at the end of a perfect day.

July 4th, 1999...nowadays the Afton Historical Society supports Afton's biggest day on the calendar. Before the gala holiday, AHS offers its Museum as a headquarters for Lucy McAllister's Afton Schooner Band so it can practice there and use it as a gathering point for the hay-rack-riding musicians.

The Society has been selecting the parade Grand Marshals since 1986. Before that time, the Afton Parade Committee was responsible for this task. The Grand Marshal rides in a 1921 Model T Ford touring car.

The parade still goes on down Main Street at 12:00 noon; if you miss it going one way, don't worry because the parade turns around and comes back the other way. Families still picnic in Village Park and the food and beverages are still as great as they were in 1900.

Located north of St. Francis of Assisi Catholic Church, in 1908, “ The Anchorage” was sold to the St. Paul Automobile Club. According to the media, “After extensive landscape gardening and the overhauling of the premises, at large expense, the Auto Club will be opened in early spring (1909). Beautiful furnishings will be taken over with the clubhouse and the premises as they stand with 30 acres of land.” The club’s new location would have water sports, like motor boating, canoeing, sailing, rowing, fishing, and of course, bathing. However, by the spring of 1912, serious problems developed and the club’s board decided to abandon it, citing financial loss ($20,000), its inaccessibility to St. Paul pleasure seekers, and the failure of Washington County to cooperate in upkeep of roads between St. Paul and Lake St. Croix. In the spring of 1914, it was rumored “The Anchorage” site was being considered by the Ford Motor Co. of Detroit. However, the Ford plant was built in St. Paul. Several club members purchased lakeshore property for summer cottages and by the 1940’s, winterized for year around use.

Two men in row boat, a tug boat (the Marion), and a barge heaped with clams on the shore of the St. Croix River at Afton, Minnesota. In the drought year of 1911, the river channel was often, in places, no more than twenty feet wide. That was the year towns people reaped a harvest of clams. They did not eat the clams; they searched them for pearls. A gem quality pearl, pink, white, blue, or purple, the size of a pea, brought $100 or more. The imperfect pearls were called slugs. The Lake City Button Factory bought clam shells for the inner mother-of-pearl linings from which they made buttons. The farmers crushed the shells and fed them to chickens. To catch clams in quantity, a long iron pipe was used. Attached to the pipe were lines at the end of which were large three-pronged hooks. This device was dropped overboard in the shallow flats. The clammer then rowed away, dropping about forty feet of rope attached to the pipe. He anchored his boat and cranked a windlass which dragged the pipe along the bottom of the river and finally raised the bar up to the boat with clams caught (they clamped) on the large hooks.
Written by Richard Dieter.

The mounds, located in Afton Township, east of Mound Prairie Cemetery on Highway 18 (old Highway 95) are composed of bedrock. Bedrock is any solid rock mass, either at the surface of underlying such surface deposits, as glacial drift. Originally they were laid down by epicontinental seas covering North America in the Lower Ordivician, Lower Paleozoic Era, millions of years ago. They are composed of marine sediments in pre-glacial era; few fossils would be located there. The hills are capped with limestone that is resistant to erosion. However, the surrounding loose sand and gravel sides have eroded from the hillsides of the caps by action of local water run-off and at present geological scouring about 10,000 years ago during the last glacial action. On Highway 94 west of the St. Croix River is a selica or quartz possessing the same sand that originally surrounded the Bissell Mounds. The mounds are named for the family that lived near them in 1842-50. The first traveled road in Woodbury was from Stillwater to St. Paul via the Bissell Mounds. The mounds are 3 singular mounds of different sizes, occupying from 1/2 to 1/4 acre, situated on high ridges 40 to 50 ft. high.