Where Are The Falls Of The St. Croix?
Posted by: 
GeodeGal
N 45° 24.977 W 092° 38.754
15T E 527705 N 5029256
Once a mill by a dam site, now a dam at the mill site.
Waymark Code: WMJDH
Location: Wisconsin, United States
Date Posted: 07/27/2006
Views: 40
The Falls of the St. Croix River, a series of turbulent cascades that dropped 55 feet in less than six miles, were impounded in the 1900s by this hydroelectric dam. The potential manufacturing power of the falls drew developers who settled this town in 1838.
A lumbering capital that was to center on a sawmill here never materialized, as disputes over ownership of the property bound the venture in litigation and inept management. The rich harvest of pine floated to sawmills down river as the St. Croix Lumber Company faded away.
But the community flourished on the power of the water flowing from the traprock bluffs. A "manufacturing center" evolved around these millstreams. Grist and flour mills, a gunsmith and planing and woodworking shops, even a ginseng washing plant prospered here in the late 1800s before electricity came to the valley.
As people here than ruefully noted, "We once had a mill by the dam site, but we now only have a dam at the mill site." Erected 2000
County: Polk
Location: Park
MarkerID: Not listed
|
Visit Instructions:
- A picture of the marker with your GPSr or you holding your GPSr.