Sherburne County Heritage Center Interpretive Plan Final Report 2005

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Exhibit Station: 6 Topic: Outdoor Life in Sherburne County Story: When Sherburne County was first surveyed by the federal government's General Land Office in the late 1840s and early 1850s, surveyors found mostly prairie grassland in a broad band stretching from the Mississippi River, scattered oak mixed with prairie grasses and flowers, and oak brushland in the county's interior. Primarily covered with this mix of prairie and a transitional plant community called Oak Savanna, the county is on the edge of three major plant communities: the Big Woods, the prairie, and the pine forest. Because of its location on the edge of these major plant communities, Sherburne County was a haven for wildlife. Early explorers described a bountiful land filled with beaver, otter, muskrats, ducks, and bison along the Mississippi River, and elk and black bear in the uplands. The myriad wetlands of the St. Francis River were renowned as an area that contained some of the most abundant wildlife in Minnesota. Tribal groups fought over the privilege to hunt here, and early settlers supported their families on the bountiful game. Sherburne County is a place where people still enjoy the outdoors: hiking, skiing, hunting, fishing, viewing and photographing wildlife. Hiram Bailey, a brother of Orlando Bailey, who founded Bailey's Station, and his wife and five children came to Sherburne County in 1870. Vernon Bailey, a son of Hiram Bailey, was six -years -old when his family came to Sherburne County. His family settled in Meadowvale, in one of Sherburne County's rare maple -basswood forests. Forks of Tibbits.Brook and surrounding swampland protected the forest from the frequent fires that burned through the prairie and oak savanna. The soils remained moister and cooler than most parts of the county, protecting the more delicate maple and basswood trees and the other understory plants they supported. A small portion of that maple -basswood forest still survives. (Indicate where the Hiram Bailey family lived on a county/township map and the remaining forest.) In 1928 Vernon Bailey wrote a memoir of his family's life in Sherburne County, and he talked about what it was like to live here in the early days. That's What They Said! "There was still abundance of government land to be homesteaded, good rich prairie land easily converted into fields but the open prairies were cold and windy in winter and wood and building material scarce and far away. Also the hunting instincts and skill with woodsmen's tools appealed to Father and Charles [Vernon's older brother] who really decided the choice of location, six miles back from the main traveled road in beautiful virgin hardwood timber. The 80 acres which Father at first homesteaded was about half- timbered upland, and half meadow along what was then Tibbits Brook, a considerable stream that drained several rice lakes and wound through miles of old burned -out swamps and beaver meadows. It was a comfortable and bounteous region, well -sheltered from the winter storms, with great abundance of building timber, firewood, good hay that for many years Sherburne County Historical Society Heritage Center Interpretive Plan, April 21, 2005, page 32