In 1854, John Fritsche’s great-great grandfather settled on the banks of the Minnesota River outside the new town of New Ulm. Today, the 68-year-old Fritsche works around the yard on the same spot along the Minnesota River.
“We had hogs and cattle here until the ’50s. In ’63 we built a turkey barn and raised them ’til ’83,” Fritsche said. “Then we raised 100 geese a year and sold the geese and feathers until 1997 when the flood came. The waters came up and I decided not to do that anymore. We had water in seven of nine buildings.”
Fritsche’s is one of many stories Scott Kudelka, Kim Musser and Rick Moore believed should be preserved to chronicle the history and changes in the Minnesota River Valley.
“We’re creating an interactive Web site that looks at people who have a longtime history of the river. Their viewpoints on what the river looked like, what it looks like now. Their connection to the river,” said Kudelka of the Water Resources Center, housed at Minnesota State University.
Musser, who headed up the project, said they are building a Web site with a broad array of interactive features. Several video interviews with people such as Fritsche already have been done.
“We want to have an interactive impaired-waters map of the Minnesota River Basin. People can see which waters are impaired and with what,” Musser said.
Another project being worked on is an interactive site that follows the journeys of explorer Joseph Nicollet in 1838. It will show Nicollet’s journal entries describing tributaries as they entered the river with modern 360-degree panoramic images of the same spots today.
Moore, a geographic information specialist, has been compiling a host of maps and photos, going back more than a century, to provide images of how the river and the area around it has changed.
Another project will show how a Mapleton Township farm has changed from the late 1800s to now.
“They had small grain, wetlands, pasture, a little corn, livestock. It shows the history of drainage over time and now it’s mostly corn and soybeans,” Musser said. The change in agricultural landscape is fairly typical, but the Mapleton farm was picked because there was a wealth of information available.
“We found a wonderful thesis from the 1950s where this guy interviewed farmers and had the history of the farms and the drainage records going to the 1800s,” Musser said.
A draft version of the Web site is operating but not yet available for public release.
Kudelka said the $50,000 in state grants that launched the project are exhausted and the center is hoping to get more money to expand the project.
“We’re trying to get a diverse group represented. We have a traditional farmer and an organic farmer. People who canoe the river. People who know the history,” Kudelka said. “One area we’d like to do more with, that we haven’t done yet, is interviewing Native Americans.”
Fritsche hopes the interviews he and others did for the Web site will spur interest in the river.
“I think it’s a good idea. If people look on the Web site, they might get interested in the river.”
Fritsche has seen positive improvements along the river, including a return of eagles, laws that prevent new construction in the floodplain and other programs that have improved the river.
And he’s seen negative impacts, particularly, he said, the expansion of highly efficient drainage systems that bring a lot more water into the river more quickly.
“The only way to make it better is to find ways to keep more of that water up on the hills for longer before it gets down into the river.”
He’s seen the power of high-flowing water firsthand, through devastating floods and when the river, in the early ’90s, carved out a new channel and made his 52-acre peninsula — formerly a farm field — into an island.
He says he might sell the island someday to the Fish and Wildlife Service, but for now he likes holding on to it.
“I enjoy sitting in the chair and watching the pretty colors of the trees in the fall and just enjoying it.”
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