History of Landfall, Minnesota
Landfall is a mobile home park in Washington County
next to the Ramsey County line, and is regarded as the Twin Cities' most affordable
community. The population is about 700 people (176 families) living in about
300 mobile homes. The city has an area of only 52.8 acres, 11 acres of which
are the waters of Tanner's Lake, making it the county's smallest community.
Landfall occupies the southwesternmost corner of Oakdale Township, one of
the first townships organized in Washington County in November 1858 when Minnesota
became a state. At one time, the area was mostly farm land. In 1901 John Schiltgen
farmed the land Landfall sits on. Surrounding it to the north and east was
the 300-acre Oak Woods Stock Farm owned by Frank Morris. On the south was
the Hudson Road leading from St. Paul to the St. Croix River bridge at Hudson,
Wisconsin.
Landfall was incorporated in 1959. At present, it has a strip of businesses,
including a Harley Davidson dealer and a car dealership on Hudson Road, the
north service road of Interstate 94. The City of Maplewood, Ramsey County,
provides the area with services.
James and Mitzi Olson used to own all the land in Landfall. They moved there
in 1953 into a cottage that was hardly better than a log cabin. The cottage
had been there a long time and was rumored to have harbored John Dillinger,
a notorious gangster who made St. Paul his home in the 1930s. Said Mitzi Olson
in an interview in 1998, "We heard rumors that Dillinger used to live
there. A fellow who used to deliver propane gas said he used to deliver packages
for Dillinger as a boy."
The Olsons had lived in a mobile home during World War II and knew that there
was a shortage of affordable housing, so they developed their site into a
mobile home park. As it was on the early highway between St. Paul and Hudson,
Landfall developed several businesses, including a truck stop, restaurant
and nursery, most of which left when Interstate 94 was put through and access
became limited.
In the early 1990s the mobile home park was in danger of being bought up by
a developer who wished to build a shopping mall or luxury housing on the site.
The Washington County Housing and Redevelopment Authority came to the rescue
by purchasing the city and preserving its low-income housing. In 1997 the
County Authority sold Landfall to the Landfall Housing and Redevelopment Authority.