Grey Cloud Island has a long history of settlement by Native American peoples. It was an important place for the Woodland mound-builders (c. 100 B.C. to 600 A.D.) and for people of the Late Mississipian culture around 1000 A.D. By the nineteenth century it was being used by the Mdewakanton Dakota.
In the early 1830s Wakanojanjan, known to the whites as Medicine Bottle, moved to Grey Cloud Island with a splinter group of about 40 families from the Kaposia band headed by Little Crow. His village of bark houses was on the northwestern part of the island.
The Treaties of 1837, by which the Dakota ceded their lands east of the Mississippi to the United States, required that all Dakota villages be moved, so in 1838 Medicine Bottle moved across the river. His unused houses were taken over by the families of fur trader Hazen Mooers and his son-in-law Andrew Robertson. Robertson named the island for his mother-in-law, Marpiyarotawin (mock'-pee-ya-kho'-ta-ween'), or Grey Cloud Woman, whose English name was Margaret Aird Anderson Mooers.
That same summer another trader, Joseph Renshaw Brown, moved his family onto the southern part of the island to a spot called Chanwakan, Dakota for Medicine Wood, so called because of a sacred beech tree that grew there. Both groups ran trading posts and opened farms where they raised corn, wheat, and vegetables and, ultimately, blooded livestock. These families were soon joined by several others, mostly former voyageurs of French Canadian heritage and other employees of the American Fur Company. Among these were Marcel Courturier, Joseph Bourcier, Francois LaBatte, Francois McCoy, Pierre Felix, Edmund Brissette, Bartholomew Baldwin and Akipa, a Wahpeton Dakota. While some of these men were old-stock Americans, all were married to Native American women. After the U.S.-Dakota War, some of the Dakota returned to the area. A special census in 1883 shows 33 Native Americans residing on Lower Grey Cloud Island. The Dakota and French Canadian presence has remained very strong on the island.
From 1838 through 1842 J. R. Brown was the only Justice of the Peace for Wisconsin Territory north of Prairie du Chien. In 1840 Brown held the first jury trials in Washington County (then called St. Croix County, Wisconsin Territory). The jury met in Brown's log house at Chanwakan to try two cases of "forcible detainer and entry," that is, claim jumping. Brown's home also was one of the county's three polling places for the first election August 3, 1840. In the 1841 election Chanwakan precinct returned nine votes.
In 1856 Brown, together with St. Paul banker Truman Smith and lumberman William Gallagher, platted Gray Cloud City on the site of Brown's farm. That year the city as advertised as having 400 lots, a good steamboat landing and view of the river. It boasted a large store and warehouse, a brick yard and blacksmith shop operated by William R. Nobles, and several other buildings. That year Brown was also noticed trying to dredge some of the obstructions in the Mississippi to promote steamboat traffic to his new "city." The panic of 1857 appears to have put an end to Gray Cloud City. The site was acquired by Oliver Ames in the 1860s-it "made a good farm" as the saying goes. Because the dam at Hastings has raised the level of the river, part of the Gray Cloud City site is now under water.
David Hone, one of the founders of Marine on St. Croix, lived on the island for a while, as did Woodbury pioneer Alexander McHattie. James Norris, first permanent settler in Cottage Grove, came to Washington County first as a clerk employed by Mooers and Robertson on Grey Cloud.
Until 1849, Grey Cloud Island was a part of St. Croix County, Wisconsin Territory. The first Minnesota Territorial Legislature created Washington County. When Minnesota became a state, in 1858, Grey Cloud Island was included in Newport Township along with Saint Paul Park and Newport. In the 1960s, Newport and St. Paul Park became cities, and the remainder of Newport Township became Grey Cloud Township. The southwest portion of Grey Cloud Island was annexed to Cottage Grove in the early 1980s.
The island itself is separated from the "mainland" by a small channel known as the Grey Cloud Slough. In the early 1900s the island contained about 3,800 acres, partly in Newport and partly in Cottage Grove, and a population of 125. By 1990 the number of residents in Grey Cloud Township had swelled to about 400, but the latest census shows only about 300. Because of the rising water levels, it now has about 2,000 acres, with 18 miles of shoreline.
From the time of earliest settlement, there was a road from Grey Cloud Island to Newport and one to Point Douglas and Cottage Grove. By 1846 there was a way across the slough that could accommodate wagons hauling wheat from the island to Afton for milling. A timber frame bridge was erected in 1882 at the "old county road crossing" and this was replaced by a steel bridge in 1907, and the present bridge in 1933.
Numerous historical sites document the area's rich heritage. Among these are several Native American sites including the largest concentration of mounds in Washington County. An example of early Minnesota industrial history is the Grey Cloud Lime Kiln overlooking Grey Cloud Channel. Dating back to at least 1846, the kiln was operated by William B. Cowan from about 1873 until 1902 and burned limestone rock to produce quickline, used for mortar, plaster and fertilizer. The Nelson Mine on Lower Grey Cloud Island was operated by the Shiely Company from 1954 and is now owned by Aggregate Industries. The island also contains Grey Cloud Dunes, a scientific and natural area acquired by the MnDNR in 1998.
In an effort to document the area's history and progress, an early newspaper the Grey Cloud Progress, produced by St. Paul park resident M. G. Mueller, issued 8 papers in about a year and a half. Publication began in December 1903 and the last issue was printed in March 1905. Mueller would later publish the Community Life, which was issued from 1930 to 1932. Several years ago, the Washington County Historical Society was given a set of copies of the Grey Cloud Progess. Special thanks go out to Mark Luebker of East Lansing, Michigan for helping scan in the Grey Cloud Progress so that we are able to present them on-line for you.
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