The present town of Kimball was just part of Michael Patten’s farmland prior to the coming of the railway in 1886. The Patten farmhouse served as a stopping place for weary travelers through the area. From 1867 to 1870 it hosted a post office called Kimball Prairie for the convenience of area settlers.7 Nonetheless, no townsite existed. Only when the track for the railway was surveyed in early summer of 1886 did the scramble to create a village begin. Mack J. Kennedy is credited with securing a station at Kimball Prairie. He then partnered with Patten and W.D. Washburn to plat the townsite, a plat dedicated to the public in April 1887.8 At this point, Maine Prairie Corners was already losing its place as the township’s central hub. The Corners had a 25-year head start on its southern cousin. Early histories recognize Daniel Spaulding’s blacksmith shop as the first business at Maine Prairie Corners, though many list the date incorrectly as 1865. Atwood records that the blacksmith building was the meeting point where, in August 1862, the pioneers decided to build a fort in defense of their homes and land against the feared onslaught of the Sioux. David Stanley, known as D.B., opened the first store at the Corners in 1867. Wi of the fort, Maine Prairie boasted at least the following: three stores, blacksmith, doctor’s office, cheese factory, lodge hall, hotel, three churches (Methodist, Baptist and Christian, also called Disciples of Campbellite), and the growing community cemetery. Four one-room schools encircled the Corners within a mile and a half. Its thriving growth ended with the coming of the trains. When the new whistlestop was established at Kimball Prairie, new businesses quickly sprang to life. Some were merchants bringing their businesses from outside the area, and some were new businesses by local settlers. Some also were transplants from the Corners. The history of Kimball records A.P. Bisbee opening the second blacksmith shop in Kimball, having moved from his former location at Maine Prairie. It records that Dr. Mumford, who had established himself at the Corners in 1882, moved to Kimball in 1887 while maintaining his practice for the broader community. Some buildings from the Corners were later dismantled and rebuilt as homes and stores in the new town.9 Several houses – and also, in 1915, the Christian Church – were moved in their entirety to Kimball. The stage line with its contract to carry the mail, so vital to early pioneers, ceased its runs in 1903 with the loss of the mail contract and the beginning of rural free delivery. Conflicting historical records date the vanishing of the final structure at Maine Prairie in 1919 or in 1929 – either destroyed by fire or raised, with its remnants used to build a garage and coal shed in Kimball. Whichever was the case, the town faded away, leaving only its early residents, now in their final resting places. Before closing this look at the impact of the railway, we should note another “almost” for Maine Prairie. Another set or rails almost cut through the community. Wm. Mitchell, as he sent his History of Stearns County to press in early 1915, excitedly announced that another set of tracks was already being laid across the prairie. “The line passes through out [one?] of the richest and best settled parts of the county and will be of great benefit to the settlers along the route. It will touch a number of the granite quarries, giving them a cheap and ready means of transportation for their output. It will give St. Cloud a much desired connection with the Soo Railway at Kimball Prairie, the importance of which to this city cannot be overestimated. “It is the intention of the company to construct a branch line from Maine Prairie junction by way of Marty to Cold Spring, which will be a boon to the farmers in that part of the county.” Mitchell prematurely sang the praises of the Minneapolis and Central Minnesota Railway Company as he announced that the right-of-way “has been secured for practically the entire distance” from Minneapolis via Champlin, Monticello, Kimball Prairie, Fair Haven and Maine Prairie to St. Cloud. He said considerable preparatory work had been done at the southern end as far as Champlin, and that late in the fall of 1914 work was begun on the section from St. Cloud to Kimball Prairie before freezing weather put a halt to operations. Despite Mitchell’s excitement, it does not appear that the Minneapolis and Central Minnesota Railway ever incorporated, nor were the proposed tracks ever laid. Had the author sent his book to press a year later, he might have described this attempt as he did another in the previous paragraph. Of the attempt to build a line from St. Cloud through Litchfield and Gaylord to Mankato, he said, “It all sounded very attractive, but somehow it failed to materialize and was put to rest on the graveyard of its many predecessors.” The impact of the railway had rapidly shaped the community thirty years earlier, but it was not to be remolded by a competing set of tracks. Even if the track had been laid, the impact of the rise of gas-powered automobiles, becoming commonplace even in the rural community, was rapidly diminishing the importance any railway would have in years to come. It is impossible to say what the Maine Prairie community might have been like had the outcome of any of the three incidents considered in this article been different. We can only surmise. With the passing decades, the power of outside forces to shape the community steadily declined. Instead, the direction taken by the community would increasingly reflect the choices of the residents themselves: the stock of early pioneers, their descendants and the new arrivals. They are our parents, our grandparents, our great-grandparents. It is they – and we- who now shape the community we claim as our own. Duane Stanley is the Communications Director for the Hennepin County Bar Association. He is four generations removed from Thomas B. Stanley and from Joseph Eaton who arrived on Maine Prairie among the early pioneers. Footnotes 7 At that point the post office was discontinued for 17 years, until Eliel Peck, first business owner in Kimball, was appointed postmaster for the new village. 8 From “Early History of Kimball is Filled With Items of Interest,” Tri-County Messenger, October 1, 1936. 8 The script of Pioneers ‘o Pioneers published in the Tri-County News, September and October 1947 notes “The cheese factory was torn down and L.L. Olson bought the lumber and hauled it to Kimball…. Then one of the halls – the Good Templars Hall – was moved down here and my father made it into a house.” 9 Kimball Kodak, Sept. 5, 1929, “Old Landmark Being torn Down. Tearing down of old store at Maine Prairie. It will mean the passing from history of an old landmark. That structure was erected over 50 years ago by Dave Stanley in which he conducted a general store business…. The material obtained from the wreckage is being used in the erection of a garage and coal shed for Mr. Salisbury at the rear of the Kimball hotel.”
