Memories of the Chippewa River

Mandt Township in the 1930's. About fourteen miles from Montevideo
We walked three miles on gravel across fields and on dirt until we reached the Chippewa River. We put a cork in our pocket. We got the cork from a medicine bottle or a Watkins extract bottle and they were the biggest ones we could find. We wrapped our fishing line around the cork after sticking the hook in it.
Down at the river we found a bunch of willow trees and picked out a good stick that was about six feet long and an inch around. It was an absolutely good fishing pole and it was springy. We cut the branches off, cut a little notch and didn’t have five cents invested in the pole. We didn’t have to carry one all the way to and from the fishing hole. If we had a good one we hid it in the brush and hoped to find it the next time we got down to the river. When the poles got dry and hard we made new ones.
We had to hide the poles we made because there were a lot of people looking for good fishing poles. For a stringer we cut the same kind of branch and found a fork on it. It depended on how many fish we caught for how long it had to be. We slid the chubs on the stick in order to bring them home. They were only about six to eight inches long. Crappies and bullheads bit occasionally. We had to clean all our own fish but Mom fried them for us to eat.
In the worst part of the drought in 1933 and 1934 the Chippewa River almost ran dry with only a few puddles here and there in the middle. The fish in the river and in the lakes died when no rain came to keep the lakes full.
After the Drought
After the drought ended we went duck hunting in sloughs all around our house on the prairie. We had ducks and duck migrations coming through in the fall. Mallards, teal, and pintails soon ended up on our dinner table. Hunting was very good. The wetlands furnished cover for the pheasants in the winter so we had good pheasant hunting continually during the long season and the short season.

The land had a good rest for a few years with no crops growing and taking from the soil. When the rains came once again, the land produced abundant crops. Today it is all planted in corn and much of the topsoil washes down the drainage ditches and is backed up in the Chippewa River behind the dam near Lagoon Park.


May 1933
School was over by early May. We didn’t need to pick up as much wood now because it was warm but we still needed it for cooking. Now I had the whole summer off from school. It was time for us to pick eggs. There was not much water in the Chippewa River to fish in and there was very little farm work for us to do. There were no crops at all in 1933.
Getting Water for the Steam Thresher 1939
One year I was fortunate enough to get a job with a steam threshing outfit as a water boy. The steam engine that powered the threshing machine used a lot of water and burned coal. This steam outfit was owned by Gust Goulson. The steam outfits were bigger runs with bigger crews. There were twelve bundle teams and two grain haulers.
I was about sixteen years old then in 1939. Water was hauled with a Model T truck carrying a 260 gallon tank on it. I went to the Chippewa River and backed out on a sand and gravel bar in the same place as our swimming hole. I threw a hose into the river and pumped the tank full. I used a hand operated wobble pump with a long handle on it. The weather was always hot during threshing time and I’d often take a dive into the river after loading the water tank. Most of the time I went in the cool water with just a pair of trousers and no shoes.
The 1951 Flood in Smith Addition
Taking a boat to work

The water from the Chippewa River was just across the street from our home and was rising each and every day. Kay and Kathy had been born on March 15th right before a major blizzard. I went out to stay at the farm a while after they were born. The next day I had to follow the snow plow in order to make it back into town to see them again. The snow from this late winter snow melted and was filling the Chippewa River that normally was about 500 feet from our house at 515 Chippewa Street. .
We decided to take Aggie, Greg who was two and the twin babies out to Grandma and Grandpa’s just in case the river got high enough to get into the house. I still needed to go to work and I wanted to keep the water out of our basement. The floor was wood and the renters had gone away in case the water got too high.
My brother Roy had an old wooden boat that he kept in the water of Lagoon Park to keep it from drying up. I got a hold of that and with the five horse engine I used it to get back and forth to work each day. There is a little ridge on Chippewa Street and even though the water got to the middle of Chippewa Street it didn’t go up over the curb.
Each day when I got home from work, I just pulled the boat up over the curb and stored it for the night. In the morning I got up and drove the boat about a half mile across the flooded river. When it got shallow I pulled the boat up to about where the public library is now. I tied it up for the day and climbed up the hill to the telephone office or to the garage. I kept the water out of the basement pretty well until the water started to go down. Then everyone moved back in.
Thankfully we didn’t have any more big floods while we lived there until 1964. Many years after we moved out there was another major flood. That was in 1997. Now very few houses are standing in Smith Addition. The flood damaged them and they were bought up by the city and demolished or burned down. The house we owned and lived in and that at times had three families in it was damaged in the flood. The city of Montevideo decided to burn it down in 1998.
Living by the Chippewa River 1950 to 1964
In the early years when we lived close to the Chippewa River we went skating on the river across the street and took the sleds to go sliding on the nearby hills. It was easy for the kids to go skating on the river. They could put their skates on in the house and then just walk across the street to the ice rink. Then they skated over to Lagoon Park where there was a big skating rink and a warming house. There was music to skate to and the rink was well lit up at night. The men in the warming house would even help lace up the kid’s skates and tighten the laces.
Sometimes we used to go by the old dam near the mill on our way uptown. We dropped the kids off with a can a worms and fishing poles. They sat on the bank and fished while we went shopping uptown. They caught bullheads and threw them all back. I never did like bullheads. They were hard to take off the hook and they might sting you. We never did eat them.

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