The Sloughs of Sleepy Eye
The word “Sisseton” means “swamp dwellers” and the people of
Chief Sleepy Eye spent their lives in or near sloughy places. This could be probably one of many reasons
why Chief Sleepy Eye chose our town to live after he and his band was told to
move from Swan Lake in 1857. Few sloughs are left in Brown County, today due to
the eagerness for drainage. Nowadays, we have to learn to remake sloughs when
and where are needed.
The railroad tracks in Sleepy Eye had to be laid on the
highest ridge of land. This sloped
northward to Sleepy Eye Lake and its widely twisting surroundings. A slough lay along Fifth Street (now First
Avenue) between the tracks and St. Mary’s Church. A large arm of Sleepy Eye Lake spread behind
the low hill at the end of Fifth Street (First Avenue) and was known as
Geschwind’s Slough.
The main part of Sleepy Eye Lake has been dry twice in known
history. The first reported time was in
the 1802. The second time was in the
early 1930s, and there are pictures showing this. Then the lake bed was so dry that several
persons planted gardens in it. One man
missed his small dog and found it barking for help from a crack into which it
had fallen.
Moving toward the south part of town, the land sloped into
innumerable sloughs, some of which became arms of what was known as Ross Lake
during the rainy seasons. Ross Lake was
located for those who are unfamiliar, at the southeast edge of town. People on Ross Lake tied boats to their steps
as the only way to get in and out of their homes.
Ross Lake took its name from a trader who had had a cabin
near it. Warned of the Uprising in 1862,
the Ross family fled eastward toward Mankato, following the Cottonwood
River. Along the way, Mrs. Ross gave
birth to a child. This was one of the
few families which did not return after the region was pacified. The Ross Lake was always small, brushy and
weedy, and it was made smaller and smaller by being filled in until final
drainage and filling removed it entirely, but not before it flooded several
blocks in 1965.
Hotel owner Carl Berg, who came to Sleepy Eye in 1873 to build
the second hotel in Sleepy Eye, chose a site at the southeast corner of Main
Street and Sixth (now Second Avenue S.W.).
He was accustomed to shooting wild fowl from the hotel’s back door. As late as 1890 the Berg children skated from
the back of the hotel southeastward for two blocks.
Ice
boating was an occasional winter sport on Sleepy Eye Lake. In summer many rowboats could be seen, and a
boathouse stood below the park. Ice
skating was popular on Sleepy Eye Lake, the Geschwind Slough, Ross Lake, the
Dumke Slough south of Ross Lake (about the place on which the Orchid Inn
stands), and even occasionally on the Hilleschiem Slough which was in the
southwest part of town and is now a portion of the Hilleshiem Addition. Often
times, Main Street would even be considered a mass of mud.
Love this! I wish I could have seen the area before all the drainage happened.
ReplyDeleteFun to read and interesting
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