As we considered “what might have been” with regard to the Maine Prairie settlement, we looked in the first segment at how close we came to sinking our roots in “Massachusetts Prairie.” We have no idea, of course, how the community that grew up might have differed had its first visitors rediscovered their “Paradise Lost.” One can conjecture that it would have taken on a more homogenous form had it begun as a “colony” of settlers with exactly the same roots and culture. The Burbank Express and the Stage Road Delayed settlement was the first of three important forks in history that shaped Maine Prairie. A second fork in our history also was encountered very early on. At this point, the track of history was chosen not by those who intended to settle on the prairie but by those who intended to travel through it. The significant players were James Crawford Burbank, his brother Henry, and the unnamed town fathers of Clearwater.1 J.C. Burbank rose to prominence and influence throughout the state during the 1850s and ’60s, but he has been largely forgotten by history. A profile of this empire-builder was printed by the Ramsey County Historical Society as part of its “Forgotten Pioneers” series.2 In that article, Robert Orr Baker traces Burbank’s life and contribution to the state and to St. Paul in particular. Burbank was a self-made man. Born in New York, he first came to Minnesota as a lumberjack who “hewed the timbers for the Indian school the Reverend Frederick Ayer, missionary to the Chippewas, built near the present site of Belle Prairie, a few miles from Fort Ripley.” Apparently the future prospects of lumbering didn’t appeal to Burbank’s drive and dreams. His limited success next as a salesman of patent medicine also left him looking for alternatives. At the end of 1851, Burbank broke into the express business without capital backing of any kind. The express business was a cross between a business agent, errand boy, package delivery service and bonded messenger. At its simplest, it was a single individual traveling with valuable papers, money or bank drafts and small packages, guaranteeing safe delivery. Larger express services carried freight and other cargo and even the mail under bond by contract for businesses, the military and governments. Yet other express companies also carried passengers, some in open wagons along with freight and some in plain or fancy stagecoaches. During that first winter, Burbank traveled on foot from St. Paul to Hudson, Black River Falls, Prairie du Chien, and Galena, Illinois. Baker says he carried the material entrusted to him in his pocket. In the early years he hardly made enough to cover his expenses. He would hire himself out as a clerk on the paddlewheelers to cover the cost of traveling up or down the Mississippi. But less than fifteen years later, as the influential owner of the expansive Northwestern Express Company and the Minnesota Stage Company, he controlled shipping and stage lines down the Mississippi, along the Minnesota River, and on the oxcart route from St. Paul to the Red River Valley through St. Cloud. His freight wagons and stages connected with the steam-driven paddlewheeler, the Anson Northrup, at Breckenridge ready to take freight and passengers down the Red River to Pembina and Fort Garry (now Winnipeg). He had all of the mail contracts for supplying the frontier forts. On the Red River route in 1863 he ran one train “of 160 wagons, drawn by either two or four horses, and nearly 70 wagons drawn by oxen. Each wagon carried approximately a ton of freight.” J.C. enlisted as partner his younger brother Henry Clay Burbank in the late ’50s. In 1868 the Burbanks were given the contract for all government transportation in Minnesota and the Department of the Dakotas. Baker writes that the revenue from this contract alone was about $3 million. During this same period, J.C. Burbank was developing regular omnibus service around St. Paul for evening theater-goers during the week, worshippers on Sunday and picnickers to the new Como Park. He also involved himself in politics, served as the first president of the St. Paul Chamber of Commerce, took a leading role in banks and railways, and finally broke into the insurance business, the forerunner of the St. Paul Companies.
