Out In The State. What Is Being Done in Rock County – The Tide of Immigration Still Continues – Railroads Present and Prospective – Building Improvements and Other Interests in Luverne. [Correspondence of the Globe.] Luverne, Rock County, Minn., May 13, 1878. This is a bright, thrifty young town, located on the Worthington and Sioux Falls railroad, about half way between the two points. It is the county seat of Rock county, and it claims a population of seven hundred people. No county in the State enjoys a better agricultural area, and there is perhaps more of it susceptible of cultivation than can be found in any other fourteen townships in the southern tier of counties. The country is rolling, free from ponds and lakes, and the depth and fertility of the soil is unquestioned.
The Rock river a stream of considerable volume, cuts it in two north and south, and there are a dozen beautiful tributaries that water as many townships. Farther west is Beaver creek, a branch of the Big Sioux, and across three townships of the western border winds the latter river, pure as a mountain stream. The banks of all these water courses are abrupt, and their borders are void of the usual slough lands common to a prairie country. A few scattering trees, and occasionally a patch of timber of sufficient dimensions to come under the head of a grove, abound near the waters, but it is a prairie region in the strict sense of the term, and the virgin soil, all over the county, is ready to respond, as fast as quickened by the hand of industry.
Perhaps no other part of the State ever witnessed such a scramble after lands as has been going on in this county for the six weeks last past. The writer has counted one hundred immigrant wagons in a day stringing across the country in various directions, and it is not uncommon to see fifteen or twenty in a single train. Occasionally the old fashioned prairie schooner may be seen moving lazily along behind three or four yoke of meek, patient plodding bovines, but a large majority of these movers have good teams of horses and come amply prepared to encounter the stern realities of a pioneer life. They are not the weak-kneed class that wear a continual expectation of woe like a girdle, they are a hardy, sunbrowned, resolute people, full of hope and large expectations.
These people propose ere long to have another railroad, to extend from Luverne down the Rock river valley into Sioux county, Iowa, a distance of thirty miles. The survey will be made immediately after this road is completed to Sioux Falls, and the cars are to be running by October, 1879. It will open up a rich agricultural valley and pave the way for future development and unbounded enterprise. The railroad is to be completed to Sioux Falls the coming July, and after that the rush and tide of immigration will tend more in other directions. Now the thousands coming to this part of the country strike for Sioux Falls, as if that was the goal of their ambition. Sioux Falls is a good place for a reasonable population, but all who are seeking homes in the West cannot live there, and they may as well understand it first as last. It is the arable country that needs the people – the fertile acres that are spread out all over this grand region, rich as the bed of a subsided sea.
Our people are gregarious – they are too much inclined to flock into the towns and cities, where they can see and hear more, and drag out miserable existences in a sort of semi-genteel manner. Settle up the country, and the towns and cities will grow where they belong, and no faster than the growth of their surroundings will justify. Building is going on here quite briskly, and the town is enjoying a wholesome degree of prosperity. The hotels of course are reaping their harvest, and the lumber, coal, and wood yards are flourishing enterprises. Then comes the agricultural machinery business, and real estate dealers, all making money. Several brick buildings are going up, the brick being shipped from Mankato.
Kniss & Brown, bankers, and putting up a large two-story brick building, that when completed will be the best in the place. It will contain their banking room in one apartment below, and besides on the lower floor there will be a large store of general merchandise. Over the store on the second floor the Masons will have their hall, and above the bank, offices will be finished off. This banking firm is one of the solid and reliable business enterprises of this part of the State. Mr. Kniss came in here eight years ago, at a time when this part of the country was little known or thought of. It was then a vast stretch of naked prairie, with no sign of civilization for long miles, but he comprehended at a glance the marvelous capabilities of the soil, and saw in the near future the grand development that awaited coming events; so he pinned his faith here, and is more than realizing his expectations.
The leading hotel at the present time is the McCarthy house, McCarthy & Kelly proprietors. For a new town it is a very good hotel, and it is taxed to its utmost capacity day and night. The table is well furnished, the rooms and beds are tidy, and the proprietors are attentive, genial, and obliging. The Methodists and Baptists each have good church buildings, the former built of Mankato brick, and the latter of Minneapolis lumber. The place supports a large elevator, three or four lumber yards, two livery stables, school house, four or five hotels of various qualities and capacities, and the usual complement of other new town enterprises. There are about thirty-five business houses of all kinds. They want a flouring mill, as the next most important enterprise. They claim to have the water-power, and it is a little singular that some wide-awake mill man has not jumped in here and built a mill before now.
A number of thorough-going men from Eau Claire, Wisconsin, have purchased four sections of very choice land within eight miles of Luverne, which they will turn into a company farm. A portion of it will be broken this season, and the remainder of the entire twenty-five hundred and sixty acres next year. The members of the company are all prominent lumbermen, and they will work their teams in the woods in winter and in summer put them on the large farm, where they will aid in tilling the soil. Peter Truax, a member of the firm, has been here several days purchasing land and shaping things for future operations. The members of the company are G. E. Porter, president of the Northwestern Lumber company; Wm. Rust, a partner of the Eau Claire Lumber company, and J. S. Owen, another heavy lumberman. They are all wealthy and enterprising men and will make their mark wherever they do business. It is such men that are settling up the vacant places, and they are the men that will turn her fertile acres in fruitful fields and blooming gardens. (The Saint Daily Paul Globe, Wednesday Morning, May 15, 1878, Volume I, Number 121, Page 1)