News Details (Posted: February 18, 2008):

The History of St. Cloud

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St. Cloud was a waystation on the Middle and Woods branches of the Red River Trails between the Canadian border at Pembina and St. Paul. The cart trains often consisted of hundreds of ox carts; the carters would camp west of the city and cross the Mississippi in St. Cloud or in Sauk Rapids, just to the north.

The City of St. Cloud was incorporated in 1856. It developed from three distinct settlements, known as Upper Town, Middle Town, and Lower Town, that were established beginning in 1853. The remnants of the deep ravines that separated the three are still visible today. Middle Town was settled primarily by Catholic German-Americans, who were attracted to the region by Father Francis Xavier Pierz. Lower Town was founded by settlers from New England and the mid-Atlantic states. Upper Town, or Arcadia, was plotted by General Sylvanus Lowry, a slave-holding Southerner from Kentucky. Lowry was St. Cloud's first mayor, serving only one year.

Lowry battled Abolitionist newspaper editor Jane Grey Swisshelm. At one point Swisshelm's newspaper office was broken into and the press thrown into the Mississippi. St. Cloud's experience with slavery was brief. Lowry and other Southerners left St. Cloud when the Civil War broke out. Lowry died soon after in 1865.

Stephen Miller served a two-year term as Minnesota governor beginning in 1864, and is the only citizen of St. Cloud to have held the office. Miller was a businessman, lawyer, writer, active abolitionist, and personal friend of Minnesota Governor Ramsey. He was on the state's Republican electoral ticket with Abraham Lincoln in 1860. With no previous military experience, Miller ascended in rank from private to lieutenant-colonel in the Minnesota's First Regiment of Volunteers (on leaving the military, his title was "Brigadier General of Volunteers"). After fighting at Bull Run and in eight other battles, Miller became ill and later transferred to another unit, missing the regiment's famous charge at Gettysburg. His son Wesley, who had enlisted with his father, was killed in the battle.

While in military service, Miller also served as commander of Mankato's Camp Lincoln, where 38 Dakota men were executed en masse for their role in the Dakota War of 1862. As governor, Miller supported higher education, including the state normal schools, one of which later became St. Cloud State University. In his final legislative address as governor, he made a strong but unsuccessful argument for a black suffrage amendment to the state constitution.

Minnesota had previously been organized as a territory in 1849. The area had been opened to legal ownership by non-Native Americans following treaty negotiations with the Winnebago tribe in 1851 and 1852.

St. Cloud was named after Saint-Cloud, the Paris suburb, by John Wilson, a Maine native with French Huguenot ancestry. Wilson would later relate that his decision came from his interest in Napoleon, whose favorite palace was located in Saint-Cloud.

Steamboats once docked at St. Cloud, although river levels were not reliable. Granite quarries have operated in the area since the 1880s, giving St. Cloud its nickname, "The Granite City."

In 1917, Samuel C. Pandolfo started the Pan Motor Company in St. Cloud. Pandolfo claimed that St. Cloud would become the new Detroit for all the Pan-Cars produced. He was later convicted and imprisoned for attempting to defraud investors.

Source:Wikipedia®