Prehistoric and Euroamerican Archaeology of Elk River, Minnesota: Current Knowlege and Probability Modeling

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