The Bustle and Bust of Rosewood

This is an exciting find for us! It is a picture of Rosewood taken from the water tower showing the depot that burned, the side walk that was built from the depot, the dance hall were the Farmer's Club met, and in the far right hand corner in the top, you can just barely see the Opseth Boys two houses.

The town was alive! It had phones, as you can see in the lower left hand corner. it had a shipping association, it had clubs and a library and a baseball team!

We know today there is little left of this proud community which started with a handful of men organizing it in 1884. On a recent trip through the village, the only movement I saw was a dog laying in the doorway of the bank, which became a store, which became living quarters. My grandfather built that bank and in its day was a fine stucco building. The bank closed in 1924 and had numerous owners and businesses after that.

The Mission Church became a carpenter shop. An Anderson started the church, and his son locked the door on the worship building and handed the keys to someone who made it a carpenter's shop. The building remains. There are a few houses left but the house that Anderson's bought has been gone for some time. Across the road, were Olaf's house stood, it a big warehouse like building. One lone cedar tree, planted by Gust still stands.

I listened for laughter from the dance hall, prayer from the church, and men talking in the hardware store. Alas, the town was silent. In its day it serviced its community and the community took care of it. A reminder to all of us what friendship and outreach is all about. Long gone is the clamour of cream cans on the dock at the depot, the beller of cattle waiting to be shipped, the peep of the little chicks who came to Rosewood via the mail in those days, and the orders for rail cars to load green poplar trees waiting to be shipped. Gone are the people that milked those cows and separated that cream so they might have money for necessities and taxes. Gone is the depot were the shipping association shipped cattle to St. Paul on a weekly basis; the cattle taken by a manager to be certain the beef was cared for and the proper cash payment was received. Gone too, are the people with worked hard cutting wood by hand for a few dollars. It is a different live than we know. Although we work hard, we are not working hard labor, we are not freezing a few feet from our stoves in the winter. But then, neither do we drop everything to help our neighbor; do we even know are neighbors?

Joy to all.

e

On a trip to Warren, the county seat of Marshall County, I was looking for the ownership of the Gust and Olaf houses. The hand drawn map and the books of deeds listed that area as swamp land.

The picture was taken in the spring, as you can see clearly that the area near the depot looks very wet and just beyond there is snow.