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Newsletter from Montana - Minnesota
August 2007
Now since we have three horses and I am back in the saddle after 31 years of horse abstinence, I am proud to announce that I have listed an
equestrian estate in NE Minnesota, between Brainerd and Grand Rapids. There we have 117 half timbered acres, all fenced of course. The big old trees in the front yard are hiding a stunning six bedroom log home with two kitchens and den, built in 1997. There are two wood burning stoves, one upstairs and one downstairs set into stone lined nooks. Three bedrooms and an office are upstairs and three bedrooms are downstairs. It is an ideal setup for a vacation rental, retreat, B&B or for a large family. The covered deck overlooks the front yard toward the ranch gate and the white fences lining the pasture. The overall dimensions for the home are 28'x 50' - which amounts to 2,800 sqft of living space with a mudroom and an attached double garage. The historic barn in Dutch colonial style has the original siding, but it has a new roof, new wiring and is set up as a horse stable downstairs, leaving the loft for hay storage. The 36' x 50' shop has a cement floor, 220V and an attached 16' x 14' office. The 34' x 72' pole barn serves as cold storage for the equipment. The property is fenced and cross fenced for horses and with the small woods on the property will give you plenty of room to ride. The trails on the property are also groomed for snowmobiles and ATV's - the kids are having a blast! If you like trail rides, there is the Little Willow State Wildlife Management Area just a few miles to the west, the Roberts Wickstrom State Wildlife Management Area a few miles to the east and to the north you have the Land O'Lakes State Forest and the Hill River State Forest. Of course there are good sized lakes in the area as well. The nearby Round Lake and Waukenabo Lake are both about a square mile in diameter. Grand Rapids is only 37 miles to the north for all your shopping needs. It is a clean prosperous town, you will enjoy very much. To just run to get a carton of milk, there is a small town nearby, called Palisade.
If you rather just have a small home on a small acreage near a quaint city and country club, I listed a
brand new home on 2.5 acres for $ 185,000 north of Park Rapids, Minnesota. It is all one level with a bay window for the dining area and the bath tub. Three bedrooms/2 baths, hardwood floors, wainscoting, an island in the kitchen and a double garage! The subdivision features hiking trails through the woods and a common park.Only a couple miles from a German restaurant! :-)
Does following driving directions to somewhere new feel like a paper chase with all the printed directions? Well, it does not have to be; now you can use a cell-phone directions service. New cell-based driving directions provide free, easy instructions for how to get where you're going....without leaving a ginormous trail of printed directions in your wake.
Tellme - call 1-800-555-TELL (8355), and say, "Driving directions."
Or you can
text GOOGLE (466453), enter your starting address, then to, then your destination, and get free directions via text messaging.
With that said, we are finding our way from Minnesota to Western Montana, I know, I drove the stretch just two days ago. The
placer mine I have listed there seems to be too remote for most people, but others of course just love it and would not live any other way. There you are surrounded by the Lolo National Forest. The log cabin (hand peeled logs!) runs on hydro-electric power. The property is four miles long and snakes along both sides of McFarland Creek. There is still gold in the creek and this property would make a great retreat. The eight miles of old logging roads on the property connect to the trails of the National Forest and you could live there independent of the world. Make an offer, owners are motivated!
The property is half an hour from the town of Superior, which started as a settlement in 1869 and was named after the hometown of the settlers, Superior, Wisconsin.
Superior in Montana is the county seat of Mineral County and is located along the Clark Fork River and the route of the old Mullan Trail. Mineral County is the site of one of the largest gold strikes that helped settle the West. As a matter of fact, the neighbors to this property opened up their mine again and seem to do rather well.
In the 1860's and 70's, several thousand miners converged on Cedar Creek to earn their fortunes. Long after that strike played out, mining remained a mainstay of the economy. Mining, along with the development of logging and Forest Service activities contributed to the area's interesting history.
This small town offers an introduction to area history in the Mineral County Museum which explores local history and industry, including John Mullan and the Mullan Road.
Although Lewis and Clark were the first explorers known to have recorded their travels through the geographic region known as Montana in 1805, it was John Mullan, first a lieutenant and later a captain in the U.S. Army, who left his stamp on the area. As the country pushed westward, a series of forts were established to protect the civilian population from potential and often real threat by the Native Americans. Among the forts constructed was Fort Benton (in 1846), named in honor of Senator Thomas Hart Benton of Missouri, on the site of a trading post operated by the American Fur Company in the Dakota Territory. A second was Fort Walla Walla established in November 1856 in Washington Territory. It was between these two facilities that Mullan made his mark on the world.
It was because of Mullan's thoroughness and exacting nature that Mineral County lays along a major east-to-west transportation artery. Mullan, an Army trained engineer, scratched out his road from Fort Walla Walla, Washington Territory to Fort Benton, Dakota Territory during the years of 1859-1862. It was intended first to be a military route used by the Army to quell potential Indian problems, then a path for pioneers to follow into the virgin region. The road was used extensively during the hot and heady days of the Idaho and Montana gold rushes. There is even a note about a man that drove wild horses from Washington to Montana over the road during the Montana gold stampedes. There are records of camel trains plodding their way across the road delivering supplies from the west to the opening Territory of Montana.
The real value of the road came from the expedition notes made by the attendant cartographers, topographers, astronomers and other specialists during the 1853-1854 Pacific Railroad Surveys, and later on the Mullan road-building expedition. (Mullan was an active participant in both).
On October 28, 1978 Mullan's contribution to the settling of the inland northwest was recognized when the American Society of Civil Engineers dedicated the Mullan Road as a National Historic Engineering Landmark by placing a plaque commemorating the accomplishment at the top of the Fourth of July Pass in Idaho near the famed Mullan tree. In nominating the 624-mile road as a historic landmark, the ASCE noted that it "was the first major transportation facility in the Pacific Northwest whose location was selected on the basis of extensive exploratory engineering reconnaissance surveys. A sextant was used for determining astronomical positions, an odometer for measuring distances, a barometer for estimating altitudes and spirit levels for determining precise altitudes and profiles along various alternative routes.
"Mullan's . . . crews successfully determined the first time the precise latitudes and departures at various key locations in the interior of the Pacific Northwest. Both the Lewis and Clark and Stevens expeditions had hoped to do this, but equipment failures and other problems had intervened."
Considering both the method of location and the type of facility constructed, the Mullan Road was one of the first, if not the very first, 'engineered' road in the Pacific Northwest or perhaps even in the entire trans- Mississippi West. It was definitely the first engineered road in Montana."
Now if the surveyor who was supposed to establish the line between Montana and Idaho would have used a sextant and an odometer, he would not have been lost and created the panhandle of Idaho, but would have made a nice square of Idaho and Montana. Instead, he wandered around and hence we have a squished Idaho and a Montana that is too big on the west side :-) Good thing though, otherwise Missoula would be in Idaho.
Missoula is about an hour south of the property and is known as "the Garden City" for its mild winters. The city sits in an old, glacial lakebed, which is now cut by the Clark Fork River. The Bitterroot River feeds into the Clark Fork on the Southwest edge of town; the famed Big Blackfoot River meets the Clark Fork just east of town. The University of Montana is here, as is the Northern Region headquarters for the U.S. Forest Service. Just as the university students leave each year, the tourists arrive. Missoula is 3 hours south of Glacier National Park and 3-and-a-half hours west of Yellowstone National Park. It is surrounded by national forests and a handful of wilderness areas. In short, it's not a bad place to hang out. Missoula Montana offers higher education, good music, diverse choices in dining and culture with cultural attractions ranging from symphony, arts, live theatre, historical museums, shops, galleries and numerous sporting activities and events.
Stay on course and if you are in the market for a gold mine, by all means, call me!
:-)
Best Regards,
Dorothea Lowe, Broker
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