​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.

Edrie Swanson, "Winter in a Country School,"​​ In The Midst Of, Cokato Historical Society (Winter, 1984) vol. 2 no. 2.

This is the way it was the winter of 1943 in Myrback, a one-room school located nine miles northeast of Cokato, at the
crossroads and on the hill. With the excitement of the Christmas program and its auction of donated articles to raise funds for library books, and the two-week vacation over it was back to school routine. Bundled in mittens, scarves, and four buckle overshoes, the eleven students enrolled in grades one through eight reluctantly trudged through the snow which covered the field (sometimes used as shortcuts) and the seldom traveled roads to the chilly classroom.
The teacher had arrived in her Model A, which was equipped not with snow tires, but with chains.

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.”