Early Saint Croix Valley Geology & Botany Trips

With the University of Minnesota built next to the Mississippi River Valley bluffs, the department’s earliest geology field trips undoubtedly took place along the river, a short train ride could also bring field parties to Minnehaha Falls or the bluffs of Saint Paul. 

On the way back, the group was treated to a phenomenal display of northern lights. Even Hall, then thirty-seven years old, admitted he had never seen the like, while the students were enthralled. It was an auspicious omen for the university’s inaugural geology trip.

I have canoed through the Dalles in early morning with my son, when we had the bluffs and valley entirely to ourselves and it was a captivating experience. At night, under spectacular northern lights, it would be transcendent. Hence, it is no wonder that the last Ariel issue of that year hailed the geology trip as the ‘most conspicuous event of the fall term’ nor that one participant enshrined the experience in rhyme. 

It was such a remarkable celestial display that the May 31^st, 1883, Ariel’s summary of the year noted Hall’s geological excursion, with its ‘nature’s fire works’ was ‘the most conspicuous event of the fall term.’

Link to 1883 Ariel articles on 1882 Taylor's Falls Trip (including full poem)

Hall apparently hesitated to match his inaugural trip, as the next field trip mentioned by the Ariel was on October 31, 1884. This time the party only consisted of eleven students and Hall, but women made up nearly half the group. Since they had a later start, arriving at 7 p.m., the 1884 trip was a three-day trip. This time, there was no midnight boat ride, but the party discovered a swing at the top of the bluffs and both nights saw ‘midnight swings’ where ‘even our staid and dignified Professor became a boy again.’

Link to Oct. 31, 1884, Ariel article on 1884 Taylor's Falls Trip

     And sadly, no, none of my field trips to Taylor’s Falls included midnight swings…

As enjoyable as the 1884 trip might have been, four years passed before the Ariel reported Hall taking another group north. This time Hall was not alone. The previous December 20, Hall had married Sophia Lovica Seely Haight, and Sophia accompanied him on the 1888 trip in early November. 

Perhaps in light of Sophia’s participation, Hall went all out on the trip’s preparations, chartering a special train car for the party and for the first time beginning the excursion with a visit to Osceola, Wisconsin. Later that evening the party continued on to Taylor’s Fall, where the women repaired to a hotel in a hired hack while the men slept in the train car. 

Although earlier groups mentioned a toll-bridge over the St. Croix, by 1888 the students were stunned, and a bit appalled, to pay a three-cents toll to what they considered an outdated institution. On the second day, the group was joined by Elijah Evan Edwards, an artist who had served as chaplain of the 7th Minnesota Infantry during the Civil War and then as the first president of Colorado State Agricultural College, now Colorado State University. In the mid-1880s, Edwards returned to his hometown to lead Taylor's Falls Methodist Episcopal church. Edwards assured the students the dalles’ rock exposures were ‘as picturesque as any in the world.’

Link to Ariel articles on 1888 Taylor's Falls Trip

With Sophia’s help, Hall made the Osceola-Taylor’s Fall field trip an annual event for the next few years and in the spring of 1890, the couple even held the fifth annual picnic of the class of ’90 at Taylor Falls. 

The October 6, 1890, field excursion was distinctive for several reasons. It was apparently the first trip recorded in photographs, although the whereabouts of those images remain unknown. Emma Kemp, a student participant, wrote in her November 1, 1890, Ariel account of the trip that a photograph of the countryside was taken at Eagle’s Point outside Osceola, while the group posed for another photograph at the base of Osceola Falls. 

Upon arriving at Taylor’s Falls, the women again lodged in a hotel, while the men slept in the train car. However, Kemp reported the latter’s sleep was disrupted by a herd of bell-clad cows that grazed about the car all night, serenading the men with bells and bellows. On the second day, another photograph was taken of the group scattered up and down the rocky riverbank. 

Link to Ariel article on 1890 Taylor's Falls Field Trip

Unfortunately, it was not pedagogical innovation that led to the change.

Sophia Lovica Seely was born in Troupsburg, New York, in 1849, the second youngest of four daughters of Eli Todd Seeley and Sarah Curtis Seeley. Her family moved to Oshkosh, Wisconsin in May 1855, where her father worked as a building contractor. On September 9, 1875, at age 26, she married a wealthy logging baron, Augustus Haight who was twenty-eight years her senior. Their marriage was far from idyllic. Although it began well, Sophia soon found herself in an abusive situation. Within eighteen months, Augustus moved from verbal abuse to physical assaults so severe that Sophia fled their home and went through the public humiliation of divorce proceedings in an era where divorce was nearly unknown and often considered scandalous. Sophia though, had enough spirit to take her estranged husband to court despite his wealth and power. When their initial judge seemed suspicious of his claims, Augustus used his influence to move the trial to another venue. However, he met his match in Sophia, who not only won in court, but when Augustus appealed the decision, won a second time and then also successfully sued Augustus for court costs. 

Sophia Haight moved to Minnesota to rebuild her life, initially teaching in Rochester. In 1881 she accepted a faculty position at the State Normal School in Winona. During the summer of 1882, she attended the Summer School of Science at the State University which is apparently where she met Hall. The following summer, her hometown newspapers reported Haight was planning to move to Argentina to teach in Normal Schools there, but in December she instead married Hall. Reverend Jabez Brooks, the university’s professor of Greek Language and Literature officiated their ceremony. 

It was Hall’s second marriage. On July 27, 1875, he had married Nellie Dunnell, before leaving to study in Leipzig, Germany. At the time, Nellie was in poor health and hoped to recover in Europe. Instead, she died a few months later on February 21, 1876. 

Christopher’s and Sophia’s second marriage proved far happier than their first unions. With her science teaching background, Sophia was Christopher’s equal in intellectual curiosity, a co-leader of their Taylor’s Falls excursions, and within a remarkably brief time became a prominent figure in Minneapolis social circles. Sophia was secretary of the Woman’s Industrial Exchange and active in the city’s Woman’s Missionary Society.

All that came to a tragic halt on July 12, 1891, when unexpectedly Sophia died giving birth to the couple’s only child, whom Hall named Sophia in her mother’s memory. 

Sophia’s death not only altered Hall’s life but changed the trajectory of the department’s senior geology trips. Although Hall’s recently-widowed mother came to help care for his newborn, Hall understandably needed help with that fall’s excursion. Consequently, the geology trip was expanded to include botany so Professor MacMillan and his wife could co-lead the trip with Hall. MacMillan and Maud Rena Sanborn were newlyweds, married two and a half months earlier. Hall and MacMillan not only knew one another as faculty members and participants in the Geological and Natural History Survey of Minnesota but MacMillan had lived at Hall’s home during his first year at the university.

The 1891 excursion took place on Monday, October 27 with forty students 'fresh from the arms of morpheus' boarding a special train car to Osceola. Once there, the group followed the pattern set by Hall and his wife in previous years, apart from the impromptu decision by several of the men to loudly regale the townsfolk with college chants and songs until the sheriff threatened to arrest them. Five students returned to campus that evening, but the rest continued to Taylor’s Falls and spent a second day exploring the Dalles of St. Croix. 

Sophia’s death may have had another legacy in terms of the university’s geology field program. Sophia had met Hall during the university’s summer program for schoolteachers, which might have played a role in Hall’s decision the summer after her death to start an annual natural science excursion to Taylor’s Falls for summer program schoolteachers. By 1894 those excursions had grown to include one hundred and fifty teachers. 

Link to Ariel articles on 1891 Excursion

The class excursions to Osceola and Taylor’s Falls in 1892 followed the scheme of the relatively small 1891 trip, but the next year’s excursion grew dramatically. Thomas George Lee, the university’s Professor of Histology, Embryology, Bacteriology and Clinical Microscopy, joined the group along with members of the Minneapolis and St. Paul Academy of Sciences. Even a small contingent of students from Hamline University accompanied the party, led by their biology professor Henry Leslie Osborn. Altogether, the excursion numbered about one hundred and twenty. 

Link to Ariel Articles on 1892 Excursion

The following summer, roughly two hundred schoolteachers in the university summer program undertook a pilgrimage to Taylor Falls, led by Daniel Trembly MacDougal, professor of botany, geology instructor Arthur Hugo Elftman, entomologist Oscar Wilhelm Oestlund, and botany instructors Alexander Pierce Anderson, Josephine Elizabeth Tilden, Francis Ramaley, and Emma Freeman. While earlier participants were dismayed by the toll bridge, on this trip MacDougal went a step further, referring to it as ‘that infernal 5-cent toll bridge.’

Link to City Newspaper Articles on 1894 Summer Program Excursion

The next month, the geology and botany excursion took place on Monday, September 24. There was no mention of non-university participants, but the roster may have risen to over ninety as instructors and students from zoology and mining engineering joined those from geology, mineralogy, and botany. Even John Sinclair Clark, professor of Latin, came along - although his interest lay more in the trip’s fishing opportunities than its scientific merits. Despite its tradition as a senior class trip, juniors nearly matched seniors in number and at least one sophomore tagged along.

Four mining engineering students accompanied the excursion with William Remsen Appleby, the professor of mining and metallurgy.

And Appleby brought along his camera…

1894 Osceola Geology Botany Trip Photo

Any comments or concerns?

email: Kent Kirkby ([email protected])