​Each fall, from 1903 through 1915, the Cokato Street Fair took place. We have written about those before. We also have two files of images from those events. One of those images came to us in July 1996. It was an undated postcard view of a speaker at one of the fairs. The image, seen be-low, showed how community events in those days functioned. The caption reads: “SPEECH, BY, SEN. M.E. CLAPP, “COKATO FAIR” COKATO MINN.”

Interest in presenting and documenting local history was evident at the annual meeting of the Cokato Historical Society and 125 people attended a program on ice harvesting. Donnie Johnson and Milton Mattson, who harvested and delivered ice in the 30s, told many interesting stories. Slides from the photographs that Milt Mattson had taken of the complete process from cutting to stacking the cakes in the ice house served as a visual aid to ex­plain the ice harvest. Those photographs provide a valuable resource in documenting a service that was important in the com­munity before electric refrigeration and coolers.

​Susie Keskey began teaching swimming lessons on Brooks Lake on June 19, 1961. The lessons were sponsored by the Red Cross and the American Legion. They featured four divisions of instruction: Swimmers, Intermediate, Beginners, and Lifesaving. Keskey recalled that “When we had swimming lessons in early June the kids had a hard time staying warm. I had a lot of blue lipped kids.” She also remarked, “We would always bring a salt shaker to take off the blood suckers.”
When the museum staff begged Keskey for more stories about her time at Brooks Lake, she told us, “During playtime,
either before or after a swimming lesson, one of Nancy Dokken’s sons found an arrowhead in the water. I told him to take it to his mother and ask for a history lesson.”