“From the time of earliest settlement, there was a road from Grey Cloud Island to Newport and one leading to Point Douglas and Cottage Grove,” the website for the Washington County Historical Society says at www.wchsmn.org, then going on. “The island itself is separated from the mainland by a small channel known as Grey Cloud Slough. By 1846 there was a way across the slough that could accommodate wagons hauling wheat from the island to Afton for milling. A timber frame bridge, erected in 1882 at the ‘old river road crossing,’ was replaced by a steel bridge in 1946,” it says, while the arterial plan notes that present infrastructure linking the mainland to Grey Cloud Island is “fracture-prone.”
With last week’s story that a route for a major arterial is being planned in South Washington County, among the concerns addressed in the study for the route were those related to “archeological” sites, which raises the question: just what is being talked about here?
The State of Minnesota, for sure, has existed as a separate incorporated political entity since 1858, having been a territory prior to this and split from the Wisconsin Territory after the borders of Wisconsin as a state were finalized in 1848, ten years prior to the same happening for Minnesota. In like manner, people were in Minnesota before it became a state (population being one threshold to meet for such distinction) and a line kind of 1840s vintage on the Mississippi along with the failed settlement of Grey Cloud City along with a cemetery do exist in the southern part of Washington County on Grey Cloud Island. The lime kiln, damaged in a flood during the past decade, is located near at 10398 Grey Cloud Island Trail, or in plat map coordinates the southeast quarter of the northwest quarter of Section 30, Township 27, Range 21, on private property, we should add.
At one time, however, the two main resident societies were bands of Dakota (also called Sioux) and Ojibwe (sometimes called Chippewa) tribes that called the area home, with the river forming a convenient highway, boundary line, and occasional place of contention, as at Stillwater on the old prison site, since redeveloped.
When speaking of Washington County historical sites, then, the traces of Dakota and Ojibwe civilization in the area cannot be ruled out as archeological sites alongside those of more recent vintage. In point of fact, the southern part of Washington County does contain sites from before white settlers came into the area, among them the Schilling Site in the Mississippi River, as well as the largest collection of mounds in the county, per the Washington County Historical Society website. Whereas places like Newport and St. Paul Park became cities in the mid-twentieth century, Grey Cloud Island has retained its rural character to the present. Along with other sites, the Schilling Site composes what is known as the Grey Cloud Island Locality…(continues).

173 years ago
THE WEEKLY MINNESOTIAN
May 8, 1852
Government Roads in Minnesota.
Pursuant to a resolution of the House of Representatives, a report of the Topographical Bureau by Col. J. J. Abert, in respect to this subject, was transmitted by the Secretary of War in December last. Accompanying Col. Abert’s report, is appended the annual report of First Lieut. J. H. Simpson, dated, St. Paul, September 15, 1851, giving a full amount of his operations as superintendent, having the general charge of the survey of all the roads, from which we make the following extracts, being of general interest to the reader:
The route from Point Douglass to Fort Gaines runs entirely on the east side of the Mississippi River, and with but two or three exceptions within a mile or two of the river. The county through which it passes, is an interminglement of prairie and oak openings; the prairies aggregating about sixty-four miles of the distance, and the oak openings about eighty-two. The prairies, as well as the oak openings, generally approach a plain surface; the country between Point Douglass and St. Paul, however, forming an exception, the praise and oak openings in this interval being highly rolling.
The soil, both of the prairies and the oak openings, exception between Cottage Grove and Saint Paul, a distance of sixteen miles, is a black sandy loam.
Between Cottage Grove and Saint Paul the soil of the oak openings, is more or less of a hard pan gravel, of the prairie, of a marly argillaceous character.

March 19, 1853
Inaugural Address of Franklin Pierce
My Countrymen:
It is a relief to know that no heart but my own can know the personal regret and bitter sorrow over which I have been borne to a post so suitable for others, rather than desirable for myself. The circumstances under which I have been called for a limited period to preside over the destinies of the Republic, fill me with a profound sense of responsibility, but, with nothing like speaking of apprehension, I repair to the post assigned me, not as one to be sought, but but in obedience to the unsolicited expression of your will, answerable only for a fearless, faithful and diligent exercise of my best powers…(continues).
From California:
Condemned Bar, Yuba River
California, Nov. 29, 1852
It is a great speculation, I assure you, to come to this country to make money, and thousands have found it to their sorrow, by personal observation and experience, and thousands more probably will not be satisfied will they come and see for themselves…I shall direct my course back to Minnesota. I have traveled in nearly all the States and Territories in the Union, and now in the Great El Dorado, and what a humbug! I would prefer one half acre in a cranberry marsh I know of in your Territory, than run my chance of finding a fortune in the gold mines of California that is not taken up, that will more than pay for working it, and one’s expenses here and back.
California is no place for a man to come to reside…Yours truly, C. M. Freeman.
Back in Minnesota.
The river is slightly on the rise.