In the Beginning

Since the communities of Circle Pines and Lexington were carved out of what had been Blaine and Centerville, their early history is interwoven.

The first people to live here were, of course, Native Americans, though this was not a permanent home for them.  The Native Americans gathered wild rice, cranberries, and other seasonal harvests from camps that were along the Rice Creek Chain of Lakes, but this area was not their permanent home.  There is evidence of human habitation dating back as far as 6,000 years ago, but more recent evidence suggests that the Ojibwa camped here during their harvest times.  Other evidence suggests the Dakota also came here to harvest rice, but these were only temporary camps.

The area was open to legal European settlement by 1851, and evidence in land records indicates that many of the first settlers in the Blaine area, especially those in the vicinity, were speculators.  They grabbed up as much land as they could, often by hiring squatters to settle on the land with the understanding that when the clear title came through, it belonged to the spectators.  These individuals were purchasing government land at the lowest possible price, hoping that its value would increase and they could sell it at a substantial profit. 

The reality was that this area was covered by extensive bogland, which could not be farmed in those earliest years.  Still, people came here for a new start.

Some of the earliest settlers came to the northern shore of Rice Lake. Fredrick Travers built his house there in 1850. He was born in Germany, came to America in 1841, and enlisted in the U.S. Army.  He was serving at Fort Snelling here in Minnesota when he was discharged.  Fred stayed in Minnesota, and after several moves around the area, he built a house on the shores of Rice Lake, where he hunted, fished, and farmed to make his living.   His wife was Jennie, a French Canadian, and they had three children.

Life would not have been easy here in the 1850s, so Fred’s trapping, hunting, and fishing probably provided the majority of their meals.  Even his death notice in the newspaper in 1900 noted Fred’s “considerable fame” as a trapper.  He was also noted as the first white man to build a house in what would become Centerville Township.

George Townsend and Friends

George Townsend claimed land around where Centennial High School stands today, but he didn’t stay long and left very little information about himself for us to find.

Another early settler who did stay was Michael Golden.  He brought his family to America to escape the Irish potato famine.  He claimed 160 acres in the area where the Centennial Middle School was built in 1997.  Golden Lake is named for this family.

Some records indicate that a road was built through this area as early as 1847, running along what is now known as Hodgson Road. It originated from St. Paul, traversed the area between Baldwin and Rice Lake, and then turned north.  Roughly that same route was laid out as the Kettle River Road in the last half of the 1850s.  This road was the stage road during those early years.

When another road was built through here, coming from St. Anthony, close to the same route as Lake Drive today, the two intersected near what is Lake Drive and Main Street.  There was a stage depot there as they often needed to change horses on the eastbound stage at this point.  The soft sand of the Anoka County sand plain to the west made pulling the stage a lot harder, and tired the horses out so much that they needed to be changed out after getting through all those sandy roads.

Just a fun fact—Radisson Road got its name because it was the road used to deliver farm produce and cattle to the Radisson Hotel in Minneapolis from a large farming operation in Blaine in the 1880s.

Anoka County was organized in 1857, and at that time, there were only eight townships and no villages or cities within the county, so this area was known as Anoka Township.  It was not until 1877 that Blaine was organized, and it included all of what today is Lexington and most of Circle Pines.

The name Blaine originated from the area's strong Republican leanings and the local town board chair, who was from Maine. They chose to name their community after James G. Blaine, a three-time unsuccessful presidential candidate from Maine.

Three years later, the 1880 census recorded a population of 128 people living in Blaine.

Green and Greenberry Chambers

Green Chambers was born a slave, but he died a free man after farming for many years in Anoka County.  His birthplace was Barron County, Kentucky, between 1810 and 1825, depending on which record is used.  It is possible Green himself did not know what year he was born.  He was owned by James M. Gillock and was inherited by Gillock’s sons when James died.  Green was sold and was owned by Francis Chambers when the 1860 Slave Schedules were recorded.  It was from this master that Green took his surname, Chambers.  Green and his wife, Charlotte, were married in 1851 and, over the next years, had five children.  At some point, Green was separated from his family.

It is unclear whether Green was freed or escaped, but he enlisted in the Union Army on September 20, 1864, joining Company H of the 115th US Colored Regiment.  This regiment participated in the siege of Petersburg and occupied Richmond before sailing for Texas, where they served in the Rio Grande District.  Green served as a private.  At one point, Green was helping to erect a stockade when a log slipped and he was injured.  He spent some weeks in the hospital and was honorably discharged. 

One story about Green says he went in search of his children, whom he found, though it was with some difficulty since they had been released from their master.  Once his family was reunited, Green moved north, coming to Anoka County in 1865.  Records are incomplete, but it is believed that Green took up farming on the abandoned homestead of George Townsend, which is thought to be located near the Centennial School Campus in 2013.

This is where the 1870 census recorded Green and his family. The census indicated that Green owned the farm, and it had a taxable valuation of $1,000.  There were 30 improved acres, meaning they were under cultivation, and another 130 that were not improved. The family had two horses, seven head of cattle, and 12 pigs. They raised spring wheat, Indian corn, and oats, making it one of the top-producing farms in the area in 1870. 

Green’s 18-year-old son, George, died in 1874. Then, in 1875, the sheriff foreclosed on the farm because they owed $677.70 on it and were unable to pay.

Where the family lived next is not known, but the 1880 census puts the family on a piece of land in Blaine. They had horses, milk cows, pigs, poultry, and one sheep, and were raising oats, wheat, and potatoes, as well as selling firewood. 

Green and his son, Green Jr., sometimes called Greenberry, were the first people to vote in the Blaine Township elections in 1881.

In the next couple of years, Green and Lottie moved to St. Paul, where Lottie helped support the family by taking in laundry and ironing.  Green worked as a porter on the railroad.

Lottie died in 1884 and was buried in Oakland Cemetery in St. Paul. 

Green was still working for the railroad when he died of “old age” in 1898.  He was buried beside Lottie and rests with a military marker recognizing his service to the US Army.

James Elwell and the Springs

James Elwell grew up in Minnesota, attended Carleton College, and by the age of 17, had patented a new kind of bedspring. The company that began making bedsprings evolved into the Minneapolis Furniture Company and the Minneapolis Bedding Company, both of which were highly successful before he sold them to his brother.

James then bought land in what would become southeast Minneapolis. He got it cheap because it was considered wasteland—full of bogs and wetlands. James put in miles of box drains and drain tiling, and soon had 55 homes built and sold on the now stable land.

James first considered investing his profits in Red River Valley land, but instead decided to start buying land much closer to home, in Anoka County. It was in 1886 that he first acquired some of the wetlands and bogs on the east side of the county. His first stock farm (beef and milk cattle) was the Oak Leaf Farm in Ham Lake, followed by the Golden Lake Farm, which had its offices located near where the Circle Pines City Hall and Centennial Library are situated today. He planned to buy what was considered worthless land at a cheap price, drain it, and resell it at a profit. At one point, James Elwell owned 52,700 acres within Anoka County. He dug some 200 miles of ditches to drain that land and make it farmable.

Not only did these ditches drain the land, but by digging a ditch on each side and piling what was dug out in the middle, he built a fine road between his stock farms. It was called the Elwell Grade. Today, it is part of Lexington Avenue that runs between Lake Drive and the city of Ham Lake.

Prohibition: A Storied Era

Anoka County went dry in 1916, four years before the national prohibition, so stills were illegal here—but certainly not uncommon!  One raid in 1926 was on the north shore of Golden Lake. Anoka County Sheriff Pratt and his deputies found three stills there, and they arrested two men, but the man who had rented the land escaped and was never seen here again.

The stories were that one of those three stills raided belonged to a gang from St. Paul known as the Messina Gang. The Messina gang was part of the mafia branch that police believed controlled the liquor trade in St. Paul.  They were none too happy about losing their still and the arrest of Willis Goff, one of their members. They bailed him out of jail and expected him to keep the vow of silence that all their members were sworn to.

Goff expected the gang to pay $25 a week to take care of his family in exchange for that silence, but when the payments lagged and suddenly there were four more raids on Messina Gang liquor operations, the gang believed that Goff had talked.

Goff was last seen near a store run by the Messina Gang, where he was given $5 by a man the police believed was a gunman from Chicago. 

About two weeks later, a man out looking for mushrooms near Golden Lake stumbled upon a decomposing body.  When the Sheriff and the coroner came, they found two bullet holes in the skull and no identification on the body, only 78¢ and a bus transfer. The bus transfer did eventually lead to someone who could identify the body as that of Willis Goff. 

One member of the Messina family and the suspected Chicago gunman were arrested. Still, people soon appeared, swearing the two men were in Wausau, Wisconsin, at the time of the murder. The Chicago gunman was released, but the Messina family member was held on charges stemming from the moonshine operations that had been raided. 

No one was ever convicted of the murder of Willis Goff, but stories about the man continued for years, and many people remembered when they were children that they would run past the site where the body was found for fear of Willie’s ghost.  Another story that continued for years was if a child was seen putting a coin into their mouth—like children often do—their parents would say, “That coin might have been in Willie Goff’s pocket!”  Willie Goff was the “boogie man” of Circle Pines!

To OZ We Go

1929 might be remembered in national history as the year of the stock market crash and the start of the Great Depression, but in this area, it was also remembered as the year of the twin tornadoes.  It was April 5, 1929, and the pair of tornados came from the north edge of Minneapolis up through the Rice Lake area and on north into Forest Lake. There were 17 people killed by the storm, 160 more injured, and some 200 farms destroyed along the storm path that covered 21 cities and townships.

Newspaper accounts tell of a mother and child who were blown from their house into Rice Lake. Both survived and were—miraculously — unhurt. Another witness, Katie Frischmon, was near the corner of what today is Lovell Road and Lexington Avenue. She told the newspaper what she saw as the storm came: “It seemed the whole southwest end of Minnesota was about to be piled right on top of us. It made a hissing sound which grew louder and louder as it drew near.  Then it took on all the beautiful colors of the rainbow, bright red, white, grey, and then they all blended into a black, hissing monster ready to wipe us off the face of the earth.”

The photo shows the destruction of District #48 School following the tornado. It stood where the Lovell School was later built. There were pieces of school desks found in the fields around the area for more than ten years after the tornado and a piece with a student’s name carved into it was even found in a swamp near Forest Lake.

Batter, Up!

This girls’ baseball team from Rice Lake played in the 1920s. It was a favorite pastime for people of the area—either playing or watching their local teams.  This continued into the 1930s and the depression, but the hard times did take a toll on the baseball teams. No equipment and no money did not stop the games; teams just made do with a ball made from a string and rubber strips cut from an old inner tube.  Bats were easily made with an adequately sized straight branch from a tree, the bark peeled off, and whittled smooth.

Note, however, that although women gained the right to vote in 1920, many doors remained closed to them. They could have a ball team, like the one in the Rice Lake area did, but the team's manager was a man.  He is in the center of the back row.

Gordon’s Corner

In about 1941-42, Gordon Huse and his wife, Mildred, moved to the area as Gordon was convinced this neighborhood was going to grow rapidly and become the “next Edina.” Mildred wasn’t so sure, but she moved here with her husband.

They built this service station on the northwest corner of Lexington Avenue and Highway 8, and it soon became known as Gordon’s Corner. Gordon persuaded Mildred to sell food to travelers when they stopped, so he built a small stand with two pop coolers in front of the station. When that was successful, they added ice cream and hot dogs to the menu.

Eventually, the corner grew to include a garage, a gas station, a TV repair shop, a small grocery store, a café, and a hardware store.

It was even the “movie theatre” for a time in the summers of the 1950s when a man came out and set up a projector in his van to show movies on the back wall of the building.

A fire in 1970 destroyed the entire complex.

In January of 1951, they produced 100 copies of a four-page news sheet for the residents of Circle Pines.  By March, they were organized enough to ask their readers to vote on a name for the paper.

The choices were the Circle Pines Community, The Circulating Pines, The Murmuring Pines, The Pines Times, and Circle Pines New Sheet.

The editor, Mrs. Wahl, was a bit miffed when they received no votes for any of the names.

That was when Grace Gibas, the wife of the first village clerk who mailed out those postcards, voted for the name she had jokingly suggested, and the Circulating Pines was named.

In 1953, the business office for the paper was located in an apartment, with Andy Gibas and Sarah Cunningham serving as co-editors. Another resident volunteered to print the paper at his printing business in Minneapolis. The following year, the paper was incorporated as a nonprofit organization, with any income from the sale of advertisements or newspapers to be donated to charity or used for a public purpose. 

What to do with profits was never a problem, as it was not long before the newspaper became known as a subsidy newspaper, meaning that it never made a profit and sometimes only managed to stay afloat because the editors paid the bills with their own money.

The editors who provided the most monetary support for the paper were Andrew and Grace Gibas. They became co-editors in 1960 and continued in this role until the paper closed in 1994.

Under the leadership of Andrew and Grace, the paper became a “legal” paper, meaning it could print legal notices, such as minutes for local cities and school districts. Those helped pay the bills, but advertising never really took off, in part because of the newspaper’s size and also due to the paper’s roots.

Grace and Andrew were staunch supporters of the cooperative community, and they aggressively reported on civil activities and local politics, stands which sometimes alienated advertisers and even readers.

The paper gained national attention in 1962 when it began running stories about AT&T and how it believed that the mega-company was overcharging its long-distance customers by a billion dollars. Even though the article was read in a session before the US Senate, it did not win everyone over as friends of the Circulating Pines.

Throughout its existence, the Circulating Pines and its staff won numerous journalism awards, including a first-place award from the Minnesota Newspaper Association in 1969.

Sara Rosalie Wahl came to Minnesota in 1949. She said they came to Circle Pines because it was a hopeful place and they wanted to build a new life.  She described their arrival as being in a  1934 Chevy with all of their possessions, including Tarzan, their old cocker spaniel, and a fourteenth-month-old baby. 

Being a cooperative community, people expected them to participate, and Rosalie—she didn’t go by Sara—did. She was one of those who had the idea to start a community newspaper, and she was named the first editor. Their plan when they moved to Circle Pines was to build houses and start some economic venture. Their first house in Circle Pines was only a basement, and it was shared with another family.

Two more children were born while she lived in Circle Pines, but after 10 years of trying to make their cooperative community dream a reality, it just didn’t happen. Rosalie said she didn’t consider the cooperative community idea a failure—it lasted ten years and everyone learned a great deal from the venture.

It was after leaving Circle Pines that she returned to school to earn her law degree and eventually became the first woman appointed to serve on the Minnesota Supreme Court in 1977.  She was known for her efforts to address racial and gender bias in the state’s justice system.  She wrote more than 500 legal opinions during her 17 years of service on Minnesota’s highest court.

She passed away in 2013.

EVENT: Women in Politics – Tuesday, November 18, 6 p.m.- 8 p.m.

Pick up a copy of Until There is Justice or Her Honor: Rosalie Wahl and the Minnesota Women’s Movement and learn more about the essence of systemic change. How have women impacted our government? What challenges lie ahead?

Another notable person from Circle Pine is Dave Dahl, the chief meteorologist at KSTP Television. He is from one of the founding families in the cooperative venture. His father was the building inspector for the new town.

It was while growing up in a house in Circle Pines that Dave found his interest in weather. Dave was 12 years old when the 1965 tornadoes hit. He traces his own 30-year career back to that single night, saying “The May 6th, 1965 tornado outbreak was the start of my interest in weather.  A twin tornado tracked through Circle Pines that night, which is where I lived,  causing considerable damage to part of the city. My sisters and brothers and I all huddled in the hallway of our home because we didn't have a basement.  It was a scary night!” 

Dahl attended the University of Minnesota and earned his degree in meteorology from Florida State University before becoming a part of the 5 Eyewitness News team in 1977.  He has also produced a documentary on tornado-chasing for The Weather Channel and a special report on The Discovery Channel for his tornado chasing in April 1996. He says he continues to work to “teach our viewers how to deal with weather of all types, and in particular, guide them safely through  severe weather.”

The first library in Circle Pines originated when Elsa Carlson volunteered a spare bedroom in her house for use as a community library. She quickly had donations of more than 200 books, primarily novels. When she ran out of space, the books were moved to a corner of the cooperative store. Later, the Lovell School library was opened for public use.

The Anoka County Library system now serves the area. This photo shows the opening of the first county library in Circle Pines, now known as the Centennial Branch, taken in the late 1960s.

On the original, you’ll notice the “crop marks” on the photo (small black angles), which are because it came to ACHS from the Circulating Pines and was probably one they used in the newspaper at some point. The original photo was marked with the printer’s proofing marks, indicating how the picture should be cropped for the newspaper.

Check out more information on the Anoka City Library and the Anoka County Library System in the ACHS database.

In partnership with the library, we have scanned documents and images, including circulation records and the original rules (spoiler alert — you could rent a book for one dollar, but don’t get caught sharing!).

Here’s a link to the 1973 Library Board of Directors meeting minutes

The first 10 homes built by the Association were “Cemesto” homes, prefabricated houses built in Texas and shipped to Minnesota. They had slab foundations with a groove around the perimeter where a cement sheet was set in to form the walls. These houses were not very practical in a Minnesota winter, and only 10 were ever built. The houses stood on either side of West Road, starting with #5, until about 2002, when they were razed.

People who lived in the homes knew why the design of the homes changed after only ten of them were built. The doors were said to be very ill-fitting, and the dust and sand from the undeveloped areas all around them blew in under the doors. They were cold, drafty, and a disappointment to the homeowners. The goal was to have 500 homes built by the end of 1946. In reality, only 84 homes had been built by 1949.

A cooperative shopping center was built at the northeast corner of Lake Drive and Lexington in 1947, and shortly after, an apartment complex of 22 efficiency apartments was completed. Many of the new families moving into Circle Pines lived in these apartments until their houses were finished. Those apartments were eventually turned into the Pink Pony Motel and then the Circle Court Motel.