Brickmaking in Coon Rapids

by June Anderson

June 12 the city of Coon Rapids celebrated its 50th birthday. The story of brickmaking in Coon Rapids is based on the research done by Kerry Conner for the Coon Rapids History Project.

Aug. 16, 1884 the great fire of Anoka destroyed the Lincoln Mill in Anoka and lay the whole business part of the city in ashes from the Rum River east to Third Avenue. Eighty-six buildings were burned with losses totaling $600,000. From the ashes of this tragedy sprang the impetus for the growth of the Coon Creek brickyards which were the first purely locally based industry in Coon Rapids. Around 1881 Dr. D.C. Dunham of Anoka established the Anoka Pressed Brick and Terra Cotta Company. A small, two-man operation, it was located near the point where East River Road branches off from Coon Rapids Boulevard, the site of the “clay hole.”

About three years later a man named Benson started a brickyard north of the railroad tracks and in 1925 the Minnesota Ceramics Company went into operation. It was an ambitious venture employing about 100 men in the manufacture of pottery, but it only lasted about 10 years. Brickmaking, before the discovery of electricity, was a time-consuming and laborious task. The first job was the mining or “winning of the clay.” This was seasonal work. All clay intended for working the next year was dug out before winter. The constant freezing and thawing helped to break down the clay allowing the stones to be removed more easily the next spring.

The “glory-hole” method was used at Dr. Dunham’s Coon Creek clay hole that stood close to where the old Coon Rapids City Hall (now Crossroads Alternative High School) was located on Coon Rapids Boulevard. A conical pit of substantial dimensions was dug allowing the sides to cave in and be excavated. The clay hole had reached 90 feet when digging was discontinued after hitting a spring. (It is rumored that the crane used for digging is still down there.)

The late Charles Barney, a longtime resident of early Coon Rapids, remembers that brickyard. He says that after excavation, the clay would be transported by cars on a track, unloaded, mixed with water, and sent through rollers. It would roll through a machine that would compact it into a ribbon as thick and long as brick. Wires would cut off individual bricks from the ribbon of clay. The bricks were then piled by hand and fan dried with hot air. From here they were transported to huge coal-fired kilns where the brick was “burned” (a common brickmaking term for kiln fired.) It would take several days for the fires to temper the brick.

The entire life of the brickmaking industry in Coon Rapids was only about 35 years. By 1920 the yards were all out of business, eradicated through labor strife and competition from yards in other areas. Although the brickyards are long gone evidence of their existence is all around us. Just take a walk through downtown Anoka and enjoy the beauty of the fine red Coon Creek brick that makes up so many of the old buildings.

Editor’s note: An Andover resident, June Anderson serves on the Coon Rapids 50th Anniversary Commission and is a member/volunteer of the Anoka County Historical Society. This month you can join her for one of the ACHS Ghost Tours of Anoka.  E-mail jrnderson_73@msn.com

Early modes of transportation

by June Anderson

On June 12th the city of Coon Rapids celebrated its 50th birthday. In anticipation of this event, the Coon Rapids Historical Commission asked old-time residents to contribute stories to their project, “50 Stories for the 50th.”

With their permission I am sharing excerpts from some of their stories in the history column of this paper during the months of June, October, February and again in June 2010. Today’s stories were based on research by Jody Cook, John Stoeckl and Tony Walsh and accounts by John Wood, Stephen Schelb, and Beverly Wells Anderson.

Oxcarts and Streetcars

Modes of transportation in Anoka County were varied and unusual. In the early 1800s the sparse population depended on dogsleds, buggies, wagons, stage coaches and ox carts to get around. The Red River Ox Cart Trail, later to be the U.S. Military Road and still later East River Road, was a pioneer trail for early travelers. Just prior to and shortly after the Civil War, Anoka Township, part of which would later become the city of Coon Rapids, was host to vast caravans of 50 to 200 ox carts ponderously and noisily making their way north into the wilderness.

The Red River Ox Cart Trail started at Fort Snelling and followed the Mississippi River, along what is now East River Road, stopping off at the Banfill Tavern (Banfill-Locke) in Fridley and the Dunn residence in Coon Rapids as the drivers continued their journey to Pembina. In his “History of Anoka County,” Albert Goodrich compares the sound produced by wooden wheels turning on wooden axles without the smallest particles of grease to ease the friction, to that proceeding from a group of swine whose lunch is half an hour overdue.

After the Civil War more and more settlers began to arrive in Anoka Township by railroads which were beginning to creep over Minnesota. The early 1900s brought with it the invention of the Trolley Car. In 1912, Minneapolis and Northern Railway Company obtained the right of way for a trolley line from Minneapolis to Anoka. For a few cents you could ride the trolley from Minneapolis through Fridley and Coon Rapids to Anoka. In 1915 the Minneapolis-Anoka-Cuyuna Range Railroad (MACRR) took over. This railway system joined surrounding communities and enabled the village of Coon Rapids to taste a bit of the city life.

According to John Wood, the most popular way of locomotion in Coon Rapids was undoubtedly the Cuyuna Streetcar running from Anoka to Minneapolis along what is known as Coon Rapids Boulevard today. The starting station was in Anoka, near the Rum River Bridge, located where the Anoka City Hall is today. Stations for pickup were River (by Mercy Hospital), Oakland (near Crooked Lake Boulevard and East River Road) and Coon Rapids (near L.O. Jacob Elementary School).

Stephen Schelb writes, “It cost 10 cents to ride from Anoka to L.O. Jacob School. “The streetcar left Anoka on the hour headed for Minneapolis and two streetcars ran the complete route. “The streetcar provided a comfortable, reliable ride, cool and well-ventilated in the summer and warm in the winter. Steam heaters were located beneath the wicker seats. “The ride was bumpy though, but you could always find a seat since it was not too crowded. “Many friendships were made among the regular riders of the streetcar.”

Beverly Wells Anderson remembers the trolley coming from Anoka going into Minneapolis. “We nicknamed it the ‘Toonerville Trolley’.” During World War II a bus service was begun which included special busses going to the Twin Cities Arsenal to take workers to work. The automobile industry expanded at the end of the war and the streetcar’s use lessened. The last run of the Cuyuna Streetcar was in 1946 and MACRR went bankrupt.

Editor’s note: An Andover resident, June Anderson serves on the Coon Rapids 50th Anniversary Commission and is a member/volunteer of the Anoka County Historical Society. This month you can join her for one of the ACHS Ghost Tours of Anoka.

Legendary Coon Creek stories

by June Anderson

June 12, the city of Coon Rapids celebrated its 50th birthday. In anticipation of this event, the Coon Rapids Historical Commission asked old-time residents to contribute stories to its project, “50 Stories for the 50th.” With their permission I will be sharing excerpts from some of their stories in the history column of this paper during the months of October, February, and again in June 2010.  Today’s stories were taken from accounts by the Helgeson family and Janelle Cook.

Legendary Coon Creek

Since so many of the stories I have read involve Coon Creek I decided to explore this legendary waterway myself. A canoe would have been nice but I traveled its course virtually, via the Coon Creek Watershed District Web site. Its map shows Coon Creek rising in Columbus (Coon Lake), draining creeks in Blaine as it meanders through Ham Lake and Andover, continuing east to Round Lake, then curving south to Crooked Lake. After crossing Highway 242 into Coon Rapids, Coon Creek follows Highway 10, crossing it and continuing on the west side a short way before plunging south to empty into the Mississippi River between Cenaiko Lake and Highway 610.

Coon Creek Rapids for which the city was named, was once a turbulent part of the upper Mississippi near the mouth of Coon Creek. It is no more. The rapids were destroyed during the construction of the Coon Rapids Dam in 1912-14. Ironically, until that time the community was known as Coon Creek, but with the construction of the dam and destruction of the rapids, the name Coon Rapids soon evolved. The former rapids are now the site of Coon Rapids Dam Regional Park.

Probably the most famous, or infamous, section of Coon Creek was the Clay Hole, named after a brick making factory that once existed on that site. In the 50s story collection, a Helgeson family member reminisced, “In the summer we swam every day at the Clay Hole. This used to be a swimming beach where I took my first swimming lessons. The pond exists right next to the old Coon Rapids City Hall and police station. It was called the Clay Hole because sometime late in the 50s the hole filled up with water after a crane digging for clay hit a spring. They had no time to remove the crane because it filled up with water so fast. That crane still exists today at the bottom of the Clay Hole. My brothers say they actually stood on top of it one day while swimming.”

My favorite story was written by Janelle Cook in 1968 about the Coon Creek Ghost. I have saved this one for the Halloween telling.

“The neighbors played practical jokes on each other, but never with malice. The biggest and best joke was the Coon Creek Ghost whose appearance stirred up the whole country and the mystery, of which, required the assistance of the Anoka militia to solve. When I use the word ‘appearance’ I don’t mean everyone saw the ghost, but everyone in the neighborhood who was interested in the matter heard its sighs and moans. On dark nights along the roads and through the woods it moaned like a lost soul in purgatory. It continued for several weeks until at last the members of the National Guard organized an investigating committee of something more than a score and crowded the spirit so hard that it had to abandon its mechanical buzzer (a whirling wing attached by a cord to a short pole, which being rotated above the head of the operator, emitted eerie sounds.) To this day the inventor has not been identified.”

Editor’s note: An Andover resident, June Anderson serves on the Coon Rapids 50th Anniversary Committee and is a member/volunteer of the Anoka County Historical Society

Growing pains in the schools

by June Anderson

June 12 the city of Coon Rapids celebrated its 50th birthday. In anticipation of this event, the Coon Rapids Historical Commission asked old-time residents to contribute stories to their project, “50 Stories for the 50th.” With their permission I will be sharing excerpts from some of their stories in the history column of this paper during the months October, February and again in June 2010.

Today’s stories are recollections of Sharon Clark Marsolais, Grace Hawkins, and Arlene Cook Now that we’re a month into the new school year, I thought it would be timely to share some of the “50 Stories for the 50th” accounts of the early Coon Rapids schools. See if you can find the common thread weaving through them. “We moved into our new home in Coon Rapids in December of 1952 and I began attending afternoon kindergarten at Coon Rapids Elementary (L.O. Jacob).

By 1959, the school was so crowded that all of the sixth-graders were moved to the old Washington Elementary in Anoka. So, at the ripe old age of almost 10 I became a school patrol. “Since what is now Coon Rapids Boulevard was then U.S. Highway 10, the first rule as a school patrol was “try not to stop a semi-truck as they might not actually be able to stop.” I was in the second class to attend CRJHS. My parents wondered why a flashlight was a requirement for attending summer band lessons. “The secret was that under the part of the school that did not have a full basement there were maintenance tunnels and with the flashlight, one could play follow the leader down there and bang on the pipes.” – Sharon Clark Marsolais

“Mr. Morris Bye, the superintendent of ISD 11, called me on a Friday night (Feb. 1960). He said he needed me to go over to Morris Bye School on Monday morning to take two overflow kindergarten classes. “My immediate response was that I really was not planning to teach full time. He pleaded with me to go out and take a look at the situation, so I did. “When I entered the two existing kindergartens, I was appalled. There were two circles of 45 children in each room with one teacher for each of the rooms. I felt compelled to stay. “Orin Thompson was building houses all around the school and as people purchased them, they would move in on the weekends. “Every Monday morning would find a large number of students enrolling.

Soon class sizes became so large that split sessions became a necessity. “Wally Johnson was the principal and he had a very challenging job because the school grew so rapidly.” – Grace Hawkins “When our oldest daughter was ready for kindergarten, off to L.O. Jacob Elementary she went where there were three sessions a day. Coon Rapids was growing by leaps and bounds. “Mississippi Elementary was under construction. It wasn’t ready on the first of September and school started two weeks late. “Being halfway between the two schools, our kids went to the new one, ready or not. Carpenters were still working there every day. “Our girls attended Mississippi until suddenly, there was Hamilton Elementary and again we were halfway between, so the kids went to Hamilton. “Every school our kids attended was immediately overcrowded.

Finally, when our youngest was in her last year of elementary, Hoover School was built right at the end of our street. “We finally had a “walker.” Alas, she only got one year and it was back on the bus for junior high. “Needless to say, the population of Coon Rapids was growing very swiftly in those days.” – Arlene Cook

Editor’s note: An Andover resident, June Anderson serves on the Coon Rapids 50th Anniversary Committee and is a member/volunteer of the Anoka County Historical Society This month you can join her for one of the ACHS Ghost Tours of Anoka.