West Lakeland Township
West Lakeland includes the southwestern part of fractional township 29, range 20. Originally when Minnesota became a state in 1858, and townships were being organized, Lakeland Township was proposed to extend from Stillwater to Afton on Lake St. Croix. However, there were already several communities established along the St. Croix River, with most people living in Baytown Village (Bayport) and Shanghai Cooley (Lakeland). Both communities’ citizens objected to going to the other place to vote or do business.
The township formation committee came up with a compromise: the north half of the township became Baytown and the south half Lakeland. Lakeland Township also wanted to extend its southern border to have Bolles Creek as the boundary between Lakeland and Afton. Afton objected, and another compromise gave Lakeland Township all of fractional Section 2 plus 80 rods off the north part of Section 11 in Afton.
Lakeland was organized as a township Oct. 20, 1858.When Lakeland incorporated as a village in 1951, West Lakeland Township was split off and organized. The village kept the developed land and the new township became strictly rural. West Lakeland remained rural in character until the 1960s, when a housing boom occurred, particularly on the western edges. Today the township is still losing farms and gaining homes built on one- to five-acre lots. Its population today is more than 3,500, double what it was on the 1990 census.
Early Settlers
Before settlement the country was prairie with occasional groves called oak openings. The first settlers were people of French Canadians and mixed blood heritage who located along the lake shore in 1838-39 and raised the first crops, although they were gardeners rather than grain farmers. Many of the first easterners to settle Lakeland were New Englanders and Germans. Among the earliest arrivals were the Reverend Randolph, who apparently came to do missionary work, and Henry W. Crosby, who arrived in 1842 to become the first permanent settler. Crosby located a farm on the present site of the City of Lakeland.
George Clark also made a claim in 1842, but drowned soon after. William Leith, a Scot formerly employed by the Hudsons Bay Company, located in Lakeland 1843 and Edward Worth came in 1844, but both stayed only briefly. In 1844 Elias McKean staked a claim and broke 30 acres in Section 22. McKean had come to the Northwest as an employee of the St. Croix Falls Company, then became one of the original proprietors of the Stillwater sawmill and one of the founders of the village of Stillwater, before moving to Lakeland. He eventually owned nearly 500 acres in the township.
Another Stillwater founder, Jacob Fisher, came in 1848 and built the first frame house on what is now Stagecoach Trail just north of McKean’s. After 1848 arrivals were more frequent: George Leach, James and Asa B. Green, Jonas Newell, and A. D. Kingsley were among them.
Captain John Oliver, who was originally from Cornwall, England, and served for 30-odd years as a Boston harbor pilot, came to Lakeland in 1848, settling at the northern end of the village, where he later brought in two additions. He opened a farm near McKean, and died on the homestead in 1869 leaving a widow and five sons. John’s son, William Oliver, came the same year and settled near his father.
The township made application for a school district to the county commissioners in December 1851, and District Number 1 (later 21) was organized. The first school was held at the house of Elias McKean and taught by Harriet A Newell. Other schools in the township were Rentz School, organized 1859, and McKean School, organized in 1861 and built on a lot purchased from Elias McKean.
Transportation Important
Lakeland got an early start because it abuts the St. Croix River, which was the arterial highway of the early explorers, fur traders, lumbermen, and other immigrants. In 1857 the Military Road from Point Douglas to Superior, Wisconsin, was surveyed through the township. This road, now called Stagecoach Trail, had probably been in use by the early settlers, as it passes the houses of many of the pioneers, including John Oliver, Elias McKean and Jake Fisher.
The St. Paul and Omaha trackage and railroad bridge to Hudson, dating from the early 1870s, skirts the northeast portion of the township, while the Chicago, Milwaukee and St. Paul railroad, built in 1880, traverses the town parallel to the lakeshore.
Before the railroads came, Lakeland was connected to Hudson by a ferry. After a run of more than 60 years, the last ferryboat, owned by Louis Olson of Lakeland Village, went out of business. It made its last run in 1913, the year the highway bridge from Hudson to Lakeland was opened, making the ferry unprofitable. This early highway bridge was a toll bridge that crossed from downtown Hudson to Section 26, just north of the village of Lakeland. U.S. 12 (Hudson Boulevard), its route later followed by Interstate 94, crossed the St. Croix on a large bridge south of Hudson. This major highway forms the southern boundary of the township and provides direct access to St. Paul for commuters from what has become one of the city’s fast-growing eastern suburbs.