The January 22, 1880 Litchfield News-Ledger newspaper stated, “Twenty-five years ago (1855), where now stands the beautiful and enterprising city of Litchfield, was an unimproved waste, inhabited only by wild beasts and wandering bands of red men.” The famous “Big Woods” just four miles away, nearby water and rich black earth was appealing to settlers. And it was free for the homesteader. In an early historic document, this area of Minnesota was called the “Garden of the State”.

In the spring of 1855, John W. Huy, Benjamin Brown and someone named Mackenzie, all employed by a St. Paul lumber company, paddled a canoe up the Crow River to the Minnesota Territory’s west central area in search of pine timber. Not satisfied with their findings, they returned to St. Paul, but Huy organized another exploring party, consisting of D. M. Hanson, Thomas H. Skinner, and Rudolph “Fred” Schultz. Late that summer, the explorers took off for the same area and in the fall they stopped in what is now the township of Harvey. There they planned to start a town and call it Karishon, Sioux for “crow”, which is what the Indians called the area. But instead they moved on to the present day Forest City area where they met Dr. Frederick Noah Ripley (the namesake for Lake Ripley). They preferred this area so Schultz and Huy made a dugout house on the banks of the Crow River where it made a junction with a creek. Huy stayed in it through the following winter to make a claim on the land. He thus became the first permanent white resident of the county. The others, except for Dr. Ripley, returned to St. Paul.

In St. Paul, Minnesota’s capitol city, Hanson went before the legislature and urged them to create a new county, which would include the area he had just visited. Meeker County was established on February 23, 1856. The county was named in honor of Bradley B. Meeker (1813 -1873) of Minneapolis, who was an associate justice of the Minnesota Supreme Court from 1849 to 1853. Hanson and Huy were appointed Meeker County commissioners.

Hanson and Huy met in Forest City on May 6, 1856 and organized the county on paper. Ripley, another appointed commissioner, was to have joined them, but he had frozen to death the previous March half a mile from the lake which now bears his name. William S. Chapman found his body later in the spring. With the nearby Crow River for transportation, more and more people came to Forest City and it was named the county seat ( Litchfield later became the county seat) for Meeker County, Minnesota .

Litchfield was originally a portion of a Congressional township named Round Lake, but most people called it Ripley after the lake one mile from its center. Prairie schooners or covered wagons brought the first white people to settle in the area in July of 1856. They were Ole Halverson of Ness, who changed his name to Ole Ness, Henry T. Halverson, Sr., Ole Halverson of Thoen, who changed to Ole Thoen, Amos Nelson of Fossen, changed to Amos Fossen, Nels C. G. Hanson, Colberg Olson, Gunder Olson and all of their families. Having previously left their homeland of Norway in 1846, the settlers came here from Orfordville, Wisconsin (south of Madison, almost to Illinois).

Later that year, William Benson, Sven (or Swen) and Nels Swenson, Michael Lenhardt, and Ferdinand, Christian, Frederick and William Cook came, also by prairie schooner. Sarah Jane Dougherty became the first white child to be born in Meeker County. She was born in her parents’ prairie schooner in July of 1856. The first white male child, born in his parents’ crude log cabin on December 11, 1856, was Ole T. Halverson. Henry and Margaret Halverson’s cabin was the first “house” in town. More people came in 1857 and still more in 1858, including a man named George B. Waller, Sr. The pioneers, some of whom lived in nothing more than a “dugout”, named their settlement Ness on April 5, 1858, because most of the first settlers’ home church was in Ness, Hullingdahl, Norway.

Minnesota became the 32nd state in the Union on May 11, 1858, coming in as a “free state” to balance to arrival of the slave state of Kansas, a move which has been thought by historians to have eventually won the Civil War. Incidentally, o n September 8, 1850, California, the state represented on the majority of this website, had been the 31^st state to enter statehood.

In the fall of 1858, the Ness church was established in the Ness home, southwest of present day Litchfield. Norwegian Reverend William Frederickson conducted the first service. In 1874, the settlers there constructed an actual church building.

The government started offering free land to homesteaders in 1861, just as Lincoln was being inaugurated as President of the United States and the Civil War was beginning. The Indian Outbreak of 1862, also called the Sioux Uprising, slowed immigration to the area, however. The Sioux War moved further out west as the local Indians were put under control and the Civil War ended in 1865. Veterans started coming to Minnesota looking to start a new life. Immigration to Meeker County, however, continued to be slow until the St. Paul, Minneapolis and Manitoba Railroad, which became the St. Paul and Pacific and then the Great Northern, started coming through the Ness area in 1869, just as Ulysses S Grant was becoming the president.

Litchfield is among the largest of a series of "whistle stop" towns built along a railway extending west from Minneapolis in the nineteenth century. U.S. highway 12 follows the rail route, which is still active.

Trains were truly a Victorian era trend. Railroads developed across the United States mainly from 1876 to 1915. By the 1890's, there were already four U.S. transcontinental lines. By 1900, there were 16,038,000,000 miles of passenger rail and 141,597,000,000 miles of freight rail in the United States. Trains arrived and departed Chicago (the "Freight-Handler of the World") every four minutes. Freight trains, which moved slowly through industrial zones, were essential to everyday life. By 1920, American landscape was covered by more trackage than any other country.

Railroads became the nation's largest industry, surpassing all other industries in the purchase of iron, steel, and coal. It was the largest user of capital and the country's largest employer (1.7 million workers in 1910). Although the railroad industry paralleled the contradictions of Victorian American culture, its monopolies, stock manipulations, rate conspiracies, and government subsidies also represented the new business order and its unprecedented corporate power. Over a third of the labor-capital confrontations from 1870 to 1920 involved railroads, beginning with the first nationwide strikes of 1877. In 1894 the American Railway Union, led by Eugene V. Debs, boycotted all Pullman railroad cars in sympathy for Pullman workers who were protesting wage cuts, thereby setting off a national political, economic, and constitutional crisis. While they were efficient movers of gentlemen and materials, railroads also caused injury and death. Before and after the Supreme Court's 1896 decision in Plessy vs. Ferguson, blacks rode in separate cars and used only "Colored" entrances, barbershops, rest rooms, and water fountains at most southern depots. The passage of the Hepburn Act, on June 29, 1906, revitalized the Interstate Commerce Commission and authorized greater governmental authority over railroads.

The first train to arrive in Litchfield a construction train on August 13, 1869. Having been in service for only seven years, the railroad’s first locomotive was called the William Crooks Engine No. 1. Bernard Dassel paid out money to the railroad workers along the route from the train’s “pay car”. In gratitude for his loyalty, the railroad named a village after him. The William Crooks brought the first female residents to Litchfield. Marietta Porter, who was married to Charles O. Porter, came on August 26, 1869 and Mary L. Pixley, wife of insurance agent B. F. Pixley, came the next day. In September of 1924, the railroad sent the William Crooks engine on a good-will tour. It stopped in Litchfield pulling two 1862 coaches and was met by a large crowd of on-lookers.

George B. Waller, Sr. owned the original Litchfield town site land, 160 acres. He had a large apple orchard and also grew beets. Born in 1804, Waller had run a steamboat up and down the Mississippi from Alton, Illinois to Fort Snelling before settling in Litchfield. He deeded one half of his land to the railroad as an inducement for the railroad to locate a town here, which of course increased the value of his land. Charles A. F. Morris surveyed the land Waller gave to the railroad and platted it on June 17, 1869. The plat was filed on July 16, 1869.

John D. and William C. “Billy” Peterson were on one of the first trains that stopped in Litchfield. They eventually had a tobacco and candy shop on the west side of Sibley Avenue.

Ole Halverson-Ness had erected a barn in the summer of 1856. He lived in the barn for a summer while his house was being built.

In 1869, Truls Peterson built little eight by ten foot shack at the northeast corner of Marshall Avenue and Second Street, 202 Marshall Avenue North (across from the current Post Office). Truls conducted a tailoring business from his building. He had previously purchased the southeast corner of Sibley Avenue and Second Street but traded it for this corner.

Litchfield’s first real residential house and second building was next door north of Truls’ shack. In 1871, George B. Waller, Sr. built the house at 206 Marshall Avenue North. The lumber to build it was shipped from Minneapolis by rail. Ole Halverson-Ness bought the lot and it was Farmers’ Insurance Company agent B. F. Pixley’s residence for many years.

The third building constructed in Litchfield was Samuel A. Heard and C. D. Ward’s general merchandise store at the southwest corner of Sibley Avenue and Third Street. It was Litchfield’s first store and Heard was Litchfield’s eighth Village Council President in 1879.

The fourth building constructed in Litchfield was a clothing store and Post Office building owned by Horace B. Johnson, at the northwest corner of Sibley Avenue and Second Street. Johnson was Litchfield’s third Village Council President in 1874, when the population of Litchfield was just 900 people.

J. M. Miller constructed a home for himself. Joseph James built a lumber business just across the railroad tracks to the south and also his office building, which was on the west side of Sibley Avenue.

The railroad changed the population make-up of the county. By 1871, the village of Ness had grown to double the population of Forest City. The county, at that time, had 6,610 people.

When the railroad came in the fall of 1869, the businesses in town were Ward and Heard’s store, William S. Brill’s hardware, which became Meeker County’s first drug store, the lumber business (but not a lumberyard) owned by Joseph James, a lumberyard owned by John Esbjornsson and Charles Ellis Peterson, Clark L. Angell’s photography studio, Chase and Dunn’s livery stable, Charles J. Almquist’s hotel called the Litchfield House, and the Railway Land Office managed by Hans Mattson. There was only one doctor in town, George W. Weisel, Litchfield’s second Village Council President in 1873. There were three lawyers, Frank Belfoy, Newton H. Chittenden and Charles Henry Strobeck; Strobeck, born in New York, was the first lawyer in town and he was Litchfield’s eleventh Village Council President in 1882 and seventeenth mayor in 1895. Some “firsts” in Litchfield were B. O. Esping’s jewelry store, D. E. Potter’s furniture store, Mark Baldwin’s harness shop, Vanderborck (or Vanderhorck) and King’s hardware store and Harrington and Lynn’s Bank of Litchfield (which closed in 1877).

L. A. Nyholm laid the first cement sidewalk in Litchfield in 1895 in the 200 block of Sibley Avenue. Before that any sidewalks in town were made of wood. Because there was a gentle southerly slope of the land in town towards Daley Slough, by the time the sidewalk reached the end of the village, it was four feet off the ground and required steps.

Somewhere in town, most likely by the tracks and the depot, the St. Paul and Pacific railroad put up an “immigrant’s reception house.” The 1871 Meeker County News incorrectly referred to the twenty-five by sixty foot one story building as an “emigrant” house. The railroad put them up in villages, such as Litchfield, Willmar, Benson, Morris and Breckenridge, along the railroad’s lines in the 1870s. The largest one was in Duluth and it could accommodate 100 immigrants. The houses were “fitted up with cooking-stoves, washing conveniences, and beds.” The arriving immigrants were given shelter in the reception houses and the chance to buy food and clothing at cost from the railroad while they looked for land in the area. In 1885, the Stevens and Company Bank offered tickets from Germany to Litchfield for $23.00. And in 1886, a ticket from Sweden to Litchfield cost $29.50.

Litchfield got its name from three English brothers named Electus Darwin Litchfield (1817-1888), Egbert E. Litchfield (dates unknown) and Edwin Clark Litchfield (1815-1885). The Litchfields were the contractors/investors by whom the railroad line from St. Paul to St. Cloud was built in 1862 to 1864. Later, they provided the means for building a more southern line through Meeker County to Breckenridge. They also did a lot of developing in Brooklyn, New York. The main contributor in this area was Electus Darwin (for whom the town of Darwin was named).

The people of Ness were permitted to vote on the name of their town.

Electus had his wife in London donate grants of $2000 each to various religious sects in town to build churches. The Episcopal and Presbyterian churches were two of them. The Presbyterian Church, Litchfield’s first church, was built in 1870. Presbyterian minister Reverend D. B. Jackson had held the first religious service in Litchfield on August 15, 1869 in a small building that had no windows. It was also used as a schoolhouse. Litchfield’s first school, however, was in the home of Ole Halverson-Ness in 1860. Ole employed and paid John Blackwell to teach his children and as many others who could get to his house. The church-going 350 people in town could hardly snub Mr. Litchfield and keep the name Ness.

The citizens put their votes into a ballot box made out of butternut wood in 1868 by Henry T. Halverson, Sr. It was still being used in town in the early 1900s. The majority voted for the name Litchfield and the township of Litchfield was chartered as a village on February 29, 1872. The first village council meeting was held on April 5, 1872 in the railroad’s land office, which was at the northeast corner of Sibley Avenue North and Depot Street. Jesse V. Branham, Jr. was elected the President of the Council (similar to being elected mayor).

In October of 1924, E. D. Litchfield’s son, also named Electus Darwin Litchfield, came by train to visit the town. A telegram was sent in advance and the city fathers mistakenly thought old man Litchfield himself was coming. They pulled out all the stops, meeting the train with dignitaries, speeches and flowers. Junior was embarrassed and he wrote the Independent newspaper a letter of apology for the misunderstanding. “I am afraid the telegram…” he wrote, “may have been worded so as to give you all the impression that my father was to arrive. I hope you will again thank Mr. Branham’s daughter for the beautiful flowers, which his son appreciated no less than would have his father for whom they were intended.”

The town petitioned to have Electus Darwin Litchfield, Jr., an architect, design their new Post Office. Washington, D. C. gave Junior the job in November of 1933 and so the son of Litchfield’s namesake designed a brick building on the northwest corner of Second Street and Marshall Avenue.

An 1889 Litchfield Ledger article, written when the city had a population of 2,500, called Litchfield the “Queen of the Prairies” and added “No Drone in Her Hive, and Every Inhabitant Full of Work and Public Spirit”.

Litchfield wasn’t officially a city until 1943. Up until then it was a village or a town. In the early 1950s, a billboard by Lake Ripley boasted that Litchfield had a population of 5000 and a town motto of “Large enough to serve you, small enough to know you.” The north end of town had a billboard that claimed “Litchfield - The Hub Of Rural Progress”.

This scrapbook includes primarily photographs taken along the Litchfield Victorian Architecture Tour on November 11, 2006.