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<br />Project and Report Introduction <br /> <br />St., Cloud State Uaivet"ity has undenaken to work in parmerslup with the City of Elk <br /> <br />. . <br />River, as well as the Sherburne County Historical Society and the Minnesota State Historic <br />Preservation Office, to evaluate the existing archaeological and historical resources of Elk <br />River, Minnesota. Of particular interest and importance is the Milling District of the city, as <br />this fonns the historic core of the city and the reason for the initial and most intense <br />development of the area. <br />For the Milling District we have attempted to document and synthesize, as fully as <br />possible, the 10catioo, cmoiiology fl.nd history of the mills and related llldustriai sites. 1bis <br />documentation is not exhaustive and there are additional sites of historic interest in Elk <br />River, as time constraints limited our focus on industrial concerns. The most notable <br />omission is the Camp Cozy area. While Camp Cozy is only briefly mentioned in this report, <br />and while it only partly lies within the township, it may represent one of the more important <br />historical and archaeological areas in Elk River Township. <br />The prehistory and archaeology of Elk River Township remams almost completely <br />unknown and there are no documented prehistoric sites. As part of this project we <br />perfonned a thorough literature search, and discovered that essential we are starting from <br />scratch. At best, comments have been made about the lack of archaeological material in the <br />Elk River by other investigators, but we believe such remarks and subsequent interpretations <br />must be considered with great caution, We believe the lack of reported archaeological <br />material is in part a reflection of the very early industrialization of the region, and in part the <br />absence of any previous systematic investigation. Preliminary surface investigations have <br />already revealed hints of prehistoric sites near the confluence of the Mississippi and Elk <br />Rivers, For this report, efforts have focused on building a vigorous and viable probability <br />model to allow us to focus future fieldwork. <br /> <br />In general, the historical sections of this report have been written by Jason Haug. <br />Richard Rothaus wrote the prehistoric and modeling sections and compiled the document. <br />Tbis report would not have been possible with the archival material of the Sherburne <br />County Historical Society and the assistance of Kurt Kragness and Bobbie Scott <br /> <br />7 <br />