"On the trail of an old trail" from the Park Bugle

In the June 2010 edition of the Park Bugle, the neighborhood newspaper for St. Anthony Park in St. Paul (just to the east of Como), Michelle Christianson has an article about the history of the Gibbs Farm and the old Indian trail that crossed it. Go here to read it. Note the special history day that will be held at Gibbs Farm on Sunday June 27th. Connie Sullivan, our Como historian, added this context detailing the connection of the trail and the Gibbs Family to our neighborhood -- Marion Shutter's 1923 History of Minneapolis stated the obvious when he noted that MN's state roads had been laid out from Territorial days along well-worn--and well-designed!--Indian trails. One of those Territorial roads was the 1851 Willow River Road, aka a combination of the Como Road on its west end and the Hudson Road (remnants today: the Old Hudson Road in St. Paul) on the east part. It went from the east bank of St. Anthony Falls to Hudson (formerly Willow River) WI, crossing the St. Paul-to-Stillwater Road at its half way point, then heading east toward the St. Croix. More precisely for us in Como: it went up from the Mississippi River on 8th Ave. SE in Minneapolis, east on Como Ave. and then on Talmadge Ave. at about 20-something and then on a diagonal northeast to what is today's E. Hennepin/Larpenteur Ave. to the Gibbs Farm, thence east etc. It did not go into downtown St. Paul, as today's Como Ave. does, although it's real hard to find maps of just the Territorial Roads superimposed on today's MN. At some point later in the 19th century, Minneapolis reconfigured the Como Road on its west end, to straighten it and to remove the little jog up to the Gibbs Farm on Larpenteur. Before he married Jane De Bow, Heman Gibbs lived with Calvin A. Tuttle and his young family at Tuttle's farm at about the foot of 13th-14th Ave. SE, and Gibbs actually farmed Tuttle's land on the University bluff for him in 1849-50 when Gibbs first arrived in MN Territory. Gibbs Farm Museum is located several blocks east of Highway 280 on E. Hennepin/Larpenteur Ave.