Historic Sites

Origin

Towns

>Historic Sites<

Publications


Become a Member of the Historical Society
Click Here to buy your membership
Contribute to the Fred E. Lawshe Fund
Click Here to Contribute money to the Fred E. Lawshee Fund
Some pages on our site use pop-up windows. If you use a blocker set it to allow pop-ups from our web site. None will contain advertisements.

On this page you'll be introduced to historic sites in the Mendota area. Some of them are simply interesting points of local interest, but many have a unique place in the history of Minnesota or have even been deemed of National significance. Each is well worth the trip to see in person and, hopefully, this page will help you understand these sites and the role they played in our rich history.

Indicates a site that is of National historic significance and has a marker in place from the National Register of Historic Sites.

Mendota Bridge

Location: Minnesota Highway 55

When it opened on November 8, 1926, the Mendota Bridge was the longest continuous concrete-arch bridge in the world, measuring 4,119 feet. Great fanfare occasioned the opening with a telegraph from President Calvin Coolidge. Two huge caravans of approximately 15,000 cars met in the center of the bridge and Minnesota Governor Theodore Christianson untied golden ropes for its formal opening. The bridge was dedicated to the "Gopher Gunners" of the 151st Field Artillery who died in World War I. Replacing the old ferry which ran between Fort Snelling and the Village of Mendota since the mid-1800's, the bridge cost $1,870,000 and was designed by Minneapolis engineer Walter H. Wheeler and nationally famous engineer C. A. P. Turner. Koss Construction Company supervised the project which took an average of 200 men two-and-one-half years to construct.


Henry H. Sibley House

Location: Willow Street

Henry Sibley viewed the Mendota area for the first time in 1834 when he was a 23 year old clerk for the American Fur Company: "When I reached the brink of the hill overlooking the surrounding country, I was struck with the picturesque beauty of the scene...but when I descended to...where the hamlet was situated, I was disappointed to find only a group of log huts..." The following year he began construction on his house at Mendota on what is today Willow Street.

He hired stonemason John Miller, who used stone quarried from the surrounding bluffs. River mud served as mortar. Hand-split shakes covered the roof, and hand-cut wooden pegs joined the large timbers used by beams. The laths were formed using willows and rushes woven together with vines and grasses and plastered with mud. In later years, modern laths and plaster replaced them.

The building served as Sibley's bachelor home and office for nine years, accommodating the Indians he had befriended.

In 1843 he married Sarah Jane Steele, sister of Franklin Steele, the sutler at Fort Snelling. Mrs. Sibley changed the office into the parlor, and an office addition was added to the house's east. Here, the new territorial governor Alexander Ramsey, conducted his first business in 1849.

The Sibleys were gracious hosts and entertained many of the prominent people who arrived n the territory including General Lewis Cass, Henry R. Schoolcraft, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Lieutenant John Charles Fremont, George Catlin, and Stephen Douglas.

Sibley built a new home in St. Paul in 1862 and sold his Mendota home to the parish of St. Peter's Catholic Church. For the next decade it served as a convent and industrial school for girls before it was leased to several parties, including Burt Harwood, a well-known artist, who used it for a studio and art school. It later became a storehouse and subsequently a place for the homeless.

The St. Paul Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution purchased the house in 1910 and restored it for public opening that year. Over the years many pieces of Sibley's original furniture found their way back to the house and the house looks much as it did when Mrs. Sibley entertained there 130 years ago.

There is another house near the Sibley House which was built by Pioneer Hypolite Du Puis in 1854.

During the 1950s it served as the Sibley Tea House operated by the Daughters of the American Revolution. Today it is the visitor's office for the Sibley House.

The difficulty of a circle rail route prompted the railroad to seek a direct route through Mendota. An early town council approved a grade through the center of town and obtaining fill from between 2nd and 3rd Streets. The route is now abandoned, but the ridge and bridge remain and can be seen near the Sibley and Du Puis Houses.

The site is now operated by the Minnesota Historical Society.


Faribault House

The Faribault House was built in 1836 originally as a tavern when the young town of Mendota was then part of the Michigan Territory. This structure featured locally quarried stone with basement storage vaults for large quantities of food and liquor. The two upper floors were built with hand-hewn studs with willow branches interwoven between them, packed with mud, straw, and covered with plaster. The house also originally featured a ballroom and a frame structure with a kitchen and sleeping quarters at the rear.

The house was originally built for Jean Baptiste Faribault, a well known fur trader and farmer for Fort Snelling who, in 1820, became the first settler of Mendota and Dakota County. The house and grounds were presented to and served as a chapel and residence for the Jesuit missionary, Father Galtier before the completion of the Church of Saint Peter in 1853, to which Galtier was never named as pastor - preferring to continue his missionary work instead. The house passed through other ownership over the years serving for some time as a hotel and later as a storage warehouse. The Faribault House was restored first in 1936 by the Minnesota Highway Commission (now the Minnesota Department of Transportation) as part of a Civil Works Administration project. The house (and other historic Minnesota houses) were then donated to the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR). The DAR turned over management of the house to the Minnesota Historical Society which restored the house again in the 1980s.


Saint Peter's Church

Minnesota's oldest church in continuous use. In 1837 the Vatican established a new diocese (The Diocese of Dubuque) which encompassed Iowa, Minnesota West of the Mississippi, and parts of both North Dakota and South Dakota. The parish of Saint Peter's pre-dates any permanent place of worship. Jesuit missionary Father Lucien Galtier had built a log church which later became the cathedral of the Diocese of Saint Paul. Galtier relocated across the Mississippi River to Mendota where he was given a one room cabin by Jean Baptiste Faribault, which had been Faribault's previous residence. The cabin, though, collapsed one summer night in 1842 and Father Galtier was invited to stay at Faribault's new home. Father Galtier conducted mass from the Faribault house while he worked on the construction of a new chapel, the first Church of Saint Peter, which came into use in October of 1842. While the wood structure wasn't much of a building it served its purpose and one piece did survive: the altar (a simple rough cupboard) is still preserved at the museum of the Saint Paul Seminary. Galtier stayed at Saint Peter's until 1844. He was never named as the pastor of Saint Peter's Church, instead opting to continue his missionary work until he returned to his home country of France in 1845.

In 1842 Father Augustine Ravoux was appointed to Saint Peter's Church. He made the structure built by Galtier his residence and headquarters in the area. The wood structure remained in use even after the stone church was finished, serving as a rectory and then as a school before being demolished to make way for a railroad line. The current stone church was built in 1853 from locally quarried stone with hand-split shingles. The cost for construction was $4,425.80. While the exterior of the church remains much as it did in 1853, a number of interior changes have happened over the years including the addition of side galleries (1877); a sacristy-sanctuary was made by converting the old rectory quarters, a new steeple and belfry were built to replace those lost in a storm, and the side galleries were removed (1881); new pews and a different aisle arrangement, a three foot elevation of the floor near the entrance for better visibility from the back rows, a choir loft was added, and the church's first furnace was installed(1902); stained glass windows (1904); side altars, statuary, and new stations of the cross (1909); and brown wallboard was finally added (1940). The steeple was again destroyed by a storm in 1951 requiring the construction of a replacement which was completed in 1954, when the original furnace was also replaced.


Mendota Jail

In 1915 the City of Mendota felt it needed somewhere to locally hold criminals and constructed a two cell jail. The jail is no longer used by law enforcement.

However, the Mendota Jail is opened to the public one day each year by the Mendota/West St. Paul Chapter of the Dakota County Historical Society during the Mendota Days festival in July.


Military Reservation Line

Lt. Zebulon Pike's land purchase in 1805 for Fort Snelling included a portion of what is now Dakota County. The line ran through land that presently includes Burnsville, Eagan, Mendota Heights, and West Saint Paul. It doesn't actually run through Mendota, but the 1805 land purchase completely encompassed the current site of city. [ Read More about the Military Reservation Line ]


Mendota Township used to also encompass other neighboring towns before they incorporated seperately. Make sure you check out the pages for Mendota Heights and Lilydale too!


If you know of a local site in this area that you feel should be acknowledged for its historic significance we'd love to hear about it or help you to investigate and document the site. Please contact the us at:

Dakota County Historical Society
130 Third Avenue North
South Saint Paul, MN 55075

Telephone: 651/552-7548
Fax: 651/552-7265

<< RETURN TO MAP
©Copyright 2005 Dakota County Historical Society * All Worldwide Rights Reserved