Brainerd Minnesota History

This was on Oak St.,and the building is still there!

 

2015: Brainerd History Week photo releases:

 

The 2015 Brainerd History Week Committee has partnered with the Brainerd Public Library and the Crow Wing County Historical Society, to share photos taken by area residents of interesting, and now historical views!  The Committee thought this would be a good way to get folks thinking HISTORY again before the June 14-21 event.

 

The Crow Wing County Photo project was started in March and continues through May.  Frankly, when Jolene from the library suggested a project to find unpublished or forgotten photos of the area, since we always seem to see the same ones, I was confused, thinking we have hundreds now!  What could possibly be out there that that we have not already found on a post card or eBay or the entire internet?  I forgot to THINK LOCAL! 

 

In the first 5 sessions over 300 photos and documents have come in for scanning, all taken by area residents and likely never before published, and rarely seen.  Our very first entry was a CD with 48 ca. 1940 views of Shing Wako Resort on Lake Edward, and that led us to the written history of the resort AND the nearby community of Ossipee Corners that is a treasure in itself!  http://www.shingwako.com/historicalsnapshot.html

A collection of Breezy Point photos and histories that was assembled in the 1980’s was donated for scanning.  A booklet written at that time can now be shared with the world on a website.  One avid, to say the least, post card collector shared over 100 of his images.  A 1939 aerial map came in, showing 371 North looking as merely a trail.

 

An entire era in 1937-8 was captured in 70+ photos by just one Brainerd amateur photographer.  This incredible photo album chronicles a local businessman from his beginnings in the local photography club, to his travels around the state and even family hunting trips around Boom Lake.  He liked to take shots right from the ol’ Plymouth, and you can see the hood ornament in many views.  Each photo is meticulously labeled on the black paper in white ink fountain pen.  Every time they would enter town after a trip, out would come the camera.  The photo would be labeled “Coming in to town from the cities, Mille Lacs, Fargo, or Duluth”.  The captions are so informative we had to scan each photo a second time on the album itself to include those captions.  For some reason he had the foresight to capture the very most important building and events, almost as if he knew that 78 years later these would be important documentaries for future researchers.  Amazingly, his father also had some 1910’s era photos in there, so this must be where he got the bug.  The album was provided by his son, so now we have 3 generations of history buffs involved. 

 

A huge photo of NPRR workers at the Shops shows a hundred or so men, celebrating a recently completed box car made here.  We are now starting to show this around and little by little, folks are recognizing their relatives in the photo.  Wouldn’t it be fun to identify them all?

 

One of the most exciting photos for researchers was taken not in 1876, but 1976!  It appears to confirm the location of the 1875-1876 TEMPORARY railroad bridge, that was built in 10 days!  Incredibly, it took 100 years to the year, and this Crow Wing County Photo project to find this out!

 

Some other photo tidbits:

-Hawkeye Resort, Pelican Lake-1940’s

-1987 downtown fire, from slides

-Van’s Café menu-1942

-dozens of parade photos-1950’s

-Mill Ave. Greenhouse-1940-50

-Woodhead, Eldridge, Hanning, & Wood Motor Co.

-Lakeshore Gun Club-1889!

-Hickerson Garment Factory-ca. 1940

-snowbound RR engines-1923

-Marriage Certificate-1920

-Degree of Honor group photo in the Iron Exchange Building-1945

 

Early in the project, some things were discovered that we never anticipated:

 

-A whole era of several generations of photos are either lost, or hidden, or forgotten in slides.  For many families, only slide photos were taken and few were ever printed out.  Some folks have come in saying they have not seen these photos in 40 years, and even if they wanted to show home slides, the projector has long since broken down.  Once scanned, one could transfer the scan to a flash drive and bring it to any commercial printer to make prints.  Also, many negatives may be in folders, but the hard copies are lost or faded.  Fortunately, the scanner we are using has a separate scanning unit in the lid to scan 2 sizes of negatives and all slides.  Now I wonder…how many of the billions of photos taken by the smart phone these days and placed in the cloud will ever be printed out!

 

-The amateur photographer is in possession of much of our history!  This treasure trove of media must be located and preserved.

 

-The simple post card was the source for recording a good portion of the building of towns and resorts of the area, and the events such as parades and celebrations.  Now that this medium is not as popular, events such as the construction of a major new building is not even documented.  WHAT WILL REPLACE THIS?

 

-There are MANY benefits to come from the project after all of the photos are cataloged.  One of course is finding out dates of certain buildings and events.  Others are verification of business addresses and how the area grew.

 

-Looking at the old photos and how the area has changed leads one to want to go out and take photos!  One topic would be to take shots of anything NEW in the area.  The next natural step would be to RECREATE the old views, even if a particular building is no longer with us!  We have done a few as a side-by-side comparison, and it’s quite fascinating.  The best one so far is a view of Brainerd as one entered from the south on 371 in 1937.  It looks like a small country road with a few billboards…for cars, and gasoline!  Maybe not so much has changed after all.

 

-It is hoped that this project will somehow continue as a regular part of preserving our heritage.  It could be expanded by including old home movies.  Oral histories too are SO important, yet rarely done for some reason, and can be easily achieved by checking out an Oral History Kit at the library.  You just push a button and start talking!

 

-Most of us now have that amateur photographer’s camera and oral history kit right on our cell phones, so the question is, what are we going to do with it?

 

-There are many more local history researchers out there than we realized.  Photo collections, artifacts and compilations are being assembled right now and booklets are being written.  Some are published in hard copy and others are on websites.

 

-People love to share their history, if just asked!

 

Of all the Brainerd photos I have run across, the best always seem to be taken by the average guy with a camera!  Post cards are great, newspaper photos are nice, but amateur shots are just plain precious...and, they have never been seen!