In the Midst |
Use the Categories menu on the right to search through our many exciting articles on Cokato History.
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In the Midst |
Use the Categories menu on the right to search through our many exciting articles on Cokato History.
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Oliver Johnson. "Timber Harvesting," In The Midst Of, Cokato Historical Society (Winter, 1992) vol. 12 no. 1. The Cokato area was almost in the heart of the region in Minnesota which was known as the Big Woods. It was a triangular area which started a bit northwest of St. Cloud, extended south to the Minnesota River, east to the Mississippi River, and then went diagonally back to a point which was a little northeast of St. Cloud. The timber in this area consisted of hardwoods such as oak, ash, elm, maple, butternut, hickory, basswood, etc. The Big Woods area was surrounded by prairie on the south and west, and mainly coniferous trees to the north and east.
My father often talked about the many sawmills in the area. The native lumber was used extensively for buildings at first. Later the railroad provided a market for railroad ties and maple cordwood to fire the steam locomotive. My father told of hauling cordwood with oxen to Smith Lake where the trains would take on the cordwood for fuel and the farmers would earn a few dollars. I believe he said they earned one dollar for a cord of hard maple.
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Irene Bender, "Ice Harvesting." In The Midst Of, Cokato Historical Society (Winter, 1991) vol. 11 no. 1. 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.
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