Bayport, MN

History of Bayport, Minnesota

Bayport was originally three small settlements along Lake St. Croix. Baytown Village was platted in February 1856 by Stillwater businessmen Socrates Nelson, David B. Loomis, Levi Churchill, and others. A group of investors, including Isaac Staples and Andrew "Jack" Short, platted Bangor Village on the shore of the lake south of Baytown in the spring of 1857 and that July Middletown village was platted north of Baytown by William Holcombe, soon to be Minnesota's first lieutenant governor. Baytown Township was organized in May 1858 when Minnesota became a state. Both the township and the village were named from the bay that indents the west shore of Lake St. Croix.

The three small villages were combined in January, 1873 into South Stillwater. South Stillwater included the plats of Baytown, Bangor and Middletown and was incorporated as a village in 1881. The name, however, caused a lot of confusion with Stillwater and it was changed in 1922 to Bayport (although St. Croix and Goodwill were also considered by the Village Council). Bayport became a city in 1974.

Early Settlers

Apparently the first to settle at Bayport was François (or Francis) Bruce, who built a house on what is now Central Avenue in 1842. Bruce stayed only a short time; in 1850 his house was occupied by Ambrose Secrest, who became one of the first permanent residents, along with his three brothers and several other members of his family.

Also in the early 1840s Norman Kittson, a fur trade partner of Henry Sibley, built a trading post on what has since been known as Kittson's Point. Kittson did not live there, but may have installed the infamous Pierre "Pig's Eye" Parrant to mind his store. By April of 1842 Parrant had left and his "claim and improvement" on the point were sold at a sheriff's sale to Joseph R. Brown, of Dacotah, for $27.50.

Next to arrive were John Allen and wife Levina in 1844. Allen built a house and cultivated a field on the east side of Kittson's Point (also called Mulvey Point). When gold fever struck in 1849 Allen sold this property to Samuel Gleason and moved to California.

Another early settler was Joseph Perro, for 26 years a pilot on upper Mississippi and St. Croix River steamboats. Perro moved to Bayport in 1847 and purchased a great deal of property on Perro Creek, then called Spring Creek. In 1906 the Perro homestead was bought by the State of Minnesota for the new prison site. Perro is buried in St. Michael's Cemetery, which is also on land at one time belonging to "Big Joe."

A Prosperous Manufacturing Village

By 1852 the townsite proprietors Nelson, Loomis & Co. had built a steam sawmill on the bay. Soon afterward Secrest & Booth opened a flouring mill on Spring Creek. In the 1860s Torinus, Staples & Co. rebuilt the Nelson sawmill, which had burned; the firm was reorganized as the St. Croix Lumber Company in 1868. Their new mill burned in 1875 with a loss of $70,000, but was rebuilt. Several other sawmills were built in Bayport over the years. One on what is now the south end of Lakeside Park was operated by Durant, Wheeler Co. until it was purchased by David Tozer in 1878. This mill operated continuously through 1916.

Andersen Windows is the successor to these lumbering firms. The Andersen Lumber Company was established in Hudson in 1897. In 1913, needing more space, the company moved to South Stillwater where it grew to be one of the most successful businesses in the St. Croix Valley.

The St. Croix Lumber Company expanded to manufacture doors, sash, and window blinds, and for a while produced the "Crystalized Iron Plow." Other businesses that furnished employment for the people of Bayport have been a threshing machine company, furniture and box manufacturers, a brass foundry, several printing houses, and even a soap factory. In 1903 the St. Croix Lake Ice Company began cutting lake ice to store in icehouses for summer use. Packing plants and the railroads used much of the ice, and as many as 2,208 rail cars of ice a year were shipped from Bayport. For many years, ice cutting provided a boon to the farmers looking for work over their slack season.

Boat building and repair have long been associated with Bayport. Well known steamboats built at the Bayport Boat Yard were the rafters Pauline, R. J. Wheeler, and Kit Carson. The boat-building business was organized as the Stillwater Dock Company by principals of the St. Croix Lumber Co., Durant, Wheeler and Co., and Josiah Batchelder and was located just south of the Andersen Corporation.

Also constructed at South Stillwater were the raft boat Ten Broeck, built in 1882, the government boat Alert, and the Lora, a 140-footer launched in 1900 that made the round trip from Stillwater to Taylors Falls for fifty cents. The 82-ton sternwheeler Columbia, built by the Muller Boat Works in Baytown, took the last log raft from the St. Croix in 1914. The boatyard also was used for repairs and barge construction up through the Second World War.

Well Served by Railroads

The first electric street car in the northwest (so said the company) began operating from Stillwater to Bayport in July 1889. The line only lasted through 1892, but in May 1905 streetcar lines were again extended to Bayport from Stillwater, connecting valley residents to St. Paul via Mahtomedi until 1932.

For many years, until Hudson erected a bridge across the St. Croix, a ferry boat plied between Bayport and North Hudson. The first rail came into Bayport from Stillwater in 1872, built by the St. Croix Railway Improvement Co. (A. B. Stickney, secretary), the company that platted South Stillwater. The track became part of the Chicago and Northwestern Lines, which ran four or five passenger trains a day to Hudson and Stillwater. The Milwaukee Road and the Northern Pacific also carried freight and passengers through Bayport, undoubtedly a reason so much manufacturing located in the village.

In 1906 the state bought 154 acres in the northwest part of Bayport for a new prison. By 1911 enough of the buildings were up so that some prisoners could be moved from Stillwater and by 1914 the new Minnesota State Prison was complete. Over the years convicts at the "Stillwater Prison" have operated a 1600-acre dairy farm, manufactured license plates and farm machinery, and since 1886 have published the oldest prison newspaper in the US, the Prison Mirror.

For more information you can read "Bayport: Three Little Towns on the St. Croix" by Hila Sherman, published in 1976. Or visit the Washington County Historical Society Research Center in Stillwater; call 651-439-5956 or check our website at www.wchsmn.org.