Grandy Pines

A history and description of the area referred to as the Grandy Pines was written in 1974 

by Leon A.J Young

  Welcome to the Grandy Pines, a spot that lovers have cherished for at least half a century!
One cannot but admire their choice. Starlight through the lush, green overstory does lend a special spell to this place.
  This beautiful tract of Minnesota white pine stretches over an area of several square miles.
Some of the timber left here is still part of that vast virgin stand of pines that once covered a great area of eastern and northern sections of our state.
  In early days of settlement, before the sounds of the crosscut saw pierced the chilly winter air, and shaggy oxen drew great sleds of logs over creaking roadways of compacted snow, a timber cruiser called Stanchfield traversed this very area, seeking the finest trees for the camps which soon would arrive to cut the forests. Records show that lumber used at Fort Snelling came from this area.
The logs were floated down the swollen creeks in the spring until they arrived at the Rum River.
From that tributary they descended to the Mississippi and thence to the Fort. After Stanchfield came the Yankee adventurers and finally the Scandinavians, principally Norwegians and Swedes.
  It is indeed tragic for the sake of history that so little is actually recorded from these early times. Right in this area many settlers lie in unmarked graves; many homes are evident only in the fading outlines of a depression in the earth which once was a cellar beneath the pioneer cabin.

But recollections exist from children and grandchildren of the immigrants that help to provide us with a picture of events that have occurred in these pines.

These great trees have witnessed numbers of settlers walking to this region, often directed here from the land offices in towns to the east or seeking a vaguely marked parcel of land purchased from a disillusioned homesteader. One such family passed through these woods all alone, on foot.

The mother, far advanced in pregnancy, carried a knotted bundle of bedding on her back and steadied a whimpering child with her left hand. The two-year-old often stumbled and fell in the tall grass and the tangled brush. Its face was dappled with spots of drawn blood by the challenging mosquitoes, and his progress was painfully slow.

In her right hand the mother held a frayed rope attached to a bony cow whose progress was also impeded by downed timber lying across the paths where a passing summer storm had strewn them.

From time to time, the creature made half-hearted attempts to fight the swarming deer flies.

The father, striding ahead of the party, carried a cast iron stove of modest dimensions on his back. In his hands were typical tools of a homesteader: a broad ax, felling ax, saw, chisel and other important implements. He used a spade for a walking stick. 

 Soon the sharp ring of the broad ax was heard, and before the first sleet rattled disconsolately down upon the drying oak leaves, the immigrants had raised a shelter. Others who arrived here cut a dug-out into a south-facing hillside. Those who arrived too late in the season moved in with accommodating relatives or neighbors.

Early in the 1860s a Swedish immigrant family headed by Hans Tros Larsson arrived to homestead the farmland adjacent to the Pines. Like virtually every other settler, Larsson was poor, and the enlistment bounty for service in the Civil War had great appeal for him. So he enlisted in Company "D" of the Third Regiment from Minnesota, a regiment comprised entirely of Scandinavians.

  Probably we will never know the circumstances of Hans Larsson's enlistment. His grandson heard someone say that he had been hired by a rich man to serve in a wealthy man's place in the ranks--a perfectly legal option during that war. But we do know that Hans Larsson, honorably discharged, came home from the South with broken health, suffering from tuberculosis. His body simply could not accustom itself to wading, chest deep in icy southern streams, with the musket held aloft, nor could it endure sleeping in the dampness of the cotton fields during the raw autumn nights. Larsson's cold turned to pneumonia and then into the fatal infection that eventually took his life. His family remembered how his involuntary coughing could be heard along the edge of the clearing as he strove to wrest even a little more open land from the encroaching woods in the spring of 1866.

She watched them as they faded into the shadowy woods in the waning twilight. But not understanding her plight, the red men returned during the late watches of the night and set fire to the widow's log cabin. She stood there desolate and alone with her whimpering children in the snow as the flames shot weird shadows against the Grandy Pines. Then she drew the shawls and the salvaged blankets around her children and they began the painful trek eastward toward their nearest neighbor's homestead. But the all-invading cold penetrated their scanty clothing, and the chill of the winter bore down relentlessly upon them. 

A half mile or so away stood a haystack, and the mother dug a nest into it where she hovered over her restless children until dawn. Their communal warmth saved them from frostbite and freezing. Helpful neighbors took them in, warmed and fed them and provided shelter until they could return to their charred home and begin anew. The following year a young child of the community died and was laid to rest in the pines beside her grandfather. Then three new crosses rose on the gentle rise of land when three little boys were accidentally drowned while playing along a swollen stream. The homemade pine coffins arrived at the cemetery on a crude wagon drawn by a yoke of patient, plodding oxen. The great beasts grazed contentedly on the grassy knell as the grieving parents lowered the boxes with ropes into the waiting graves. With each passing year, more and more were added. Most were marked if at all, with only a wooden cross, long since decayed. 

Once a cemetery was established at Stanchfield near the Baptist Church that had been built there, it became the final resting place for later settlers in the area, and with passing generations, the cemetery in the pines became, for most, only a faint memory.  When the day of the timbermen was over and the area was becoming well-settled other means of earning a living were discovered. Around the turn of the century, this region became famous for potatoes and other root crops. Warehouses arose in Grandy, Stanchfield and other towns along the railroad and long lines of wooden wagons waited o unload their potatoes which eventually found their way by rail across America. Today though one of Minnesota's principal highways passes by, and the Grandy Pines retains much of its original beauty. It is not uncommon to find a beaver bucking the current in one of the creeks interlacing the area, carrying a poplar limb in its mouth. Otter, deer and even an occasional black bear and a moose have been sighted. Lavender moccasins and yellow moccasins grow in hidden places here. as does the rare and lovely Minnesota state flower, the showy Lady Slipper, sometimes in beds of hundreds of blossoms. Butternut, ash, basswood elms, maples and oaks thrive with the white pines, and the animal and bird life is incredibly rich. In late summer, raspberries, blackberries and blueberries ripen in the meadows and along the fence lines. 

Although the state once sought to wrest this plot away for a park, the owners have battled, virtually unaided against it. They are truly convinced that such a development could only end in the ruination of this unique area. Those who choose to live here are deeply attached to the unspoiled beauty of this place. Here can be found a measure of peace in our frantic world.