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.

​Margaret Anderson, "Sunset Over the Silage Pile." In The Midst Of, Cokato Historical Society (Late Fall, 1996) vol. 16 no. 4.

​It was the closing hours of Monday, September 25, 1978. I sat on a bench outside the Green Giant plant near the slab on which the trucks deposited their 20-25 ton loads of sweetcorn. Thousands and thousands of tons had come and gone over the summer, dumped on the slab and pushed over to the conveyor belt which would take it in to the huskers. It would emerge from the cookers hours later, ready for the warehouse. I felt a sad sense of history that night as I watched those last cobs of corn roll by on the belt,  because it was the end of an era I was watching. After seventy-five years of operation, Green Giant’s parent company had decided earlier that year the Cokato plant would be closed after the 1978 pack.  

What thief doesn’t get twitchy fingers when they come across golden bars...of butter that is. Throughout the 1920s and 1930s, gangs of butter thieves robbed Minnesota and Iowa creameries and stole their transport vehicles. Creameries that provided butter for companies, such as Land O’ Lakes, had the leverage of the companies offering large rewards for catching the thieves.  The Cokato Enterprise reported in a January 19, 1928, article that “Land O’ Lakes Creameries, Inc has been instrumental in securing the conviction of three different gangs of butter thieves, all of whom are now serving time in the Stillwater  penitentiary.”