Crow Wing State News Today

A look back in history from past issues of the Lake Country Echo and Echo Journal weekly newspapers

A look through the Brainerd Dispatch archives with Terry McCollough combing the microfilm for tidbits of history through the decades going back to 1923.

A look through the Brainerd Dispatch archives with Terry McCollough combing the microfilm for tidbits of history through the decades going back to 1923.

Even though it can be a creepy hike around a ghost town, it's still full of history, and fun to check out.

Even though it can be a creepy hike around a ghost town, it's still full of history, and fun to check out.

Even though it can be a creepy hike around a ghost town, it's still full of history, and fun to check out.

Even though it can be a creepy hike around a ghost town, it's still full of history, and fun to check out.

St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Brainerd was the first church in the nascent community of Brainerd. The historic church building was constructed at its current location near Gregory Park with a cornerstone embedded in its wall that supposedly came from an Old Crow Village church.

Linda Louise Bryan is a scholar “obsessed” with Belle Prairie, the village north of Little Falls that was founded by Frederic and Elizabeth Ayer when the Minnesota Territory was also founded. Bryan gave a free presentation Saturday, March 5, at The Charles A. Weyerhaeuser Memorial Museum in Little Falls.

The lynch mob hanging of two American Indians in front of first version of The Last Turn saloon in the late 1800s were suspected in the disappearance of an Old Crow Wing Village woman and that prompted fears of reprisal. Seventy-five soldiers came to Brainerd after Native Americans were seen in town … and it turned out they were there to sell blueberries.