Reserve Township Map

One hundred and thirty years ago, most of Ramsey County, including what are today large parts of Saint Paul, was rural Townships. This is a map of the original Reserve Township before it was annexed to the city of Saint Paul in the 1880's. In this very rare map published two years after the Civil War*, we can see a view of the original landscape of today's city.

Today the area encompasses the Saint Paul neighborhoods of Highland Park, Macalester, Groveland, Merriam Park, the West End, and much of Crocus Hill.

According to the Public Land Act of 1785, all the land west of Ohio was to be divided into six-mile squares called "Townships." Each Township was to be indexed onto a north/south and east/west grid. The "T.28 R.23" at the top of the map indicate the unique location of this Township on a national grid. Each Township is divided into 640-acre "Sections" one mile square. In this map, they are shown in bold-face numerals beginning in the upper right with "2" to "21" in the lower left. We can see that Reserve Township was about 4-1/2 miles from east to west, and about 3-1/2 miles south to north. Most of the property lines are some subdivision of a Section.

The northern boundary of the Township became (today's) Marshall Avenue. The Mississippi River constituted the south and west boundaries, with (today's) Dale Street as the eastern boundary. The map shows the original wetlands, and streams of the area. The bluff line is also shaded in. The first roads are mapped, and the small black squares indicate buildings which are, in most cases, the first farms in this part of the county. The names of individual owners of the property are printed along with the number of acres they owned.

Below the word "RESERVE," there is a road that is (today's) Randolph Avenue. Below the "S" there is a school that was at the intersection of (today's) Randolph and Snelling Avenues. Today that small limestone school is on the grounds of the new Highland Park Senior High School at Montreal and Snelling Avenues. Running north-south through the "R" is (today's) Cleveland Avenue. Above the "S" is the property of Thomas Holyoke who later gave part of his farm for the grounds of Macalester College. On the south side of Holyoke's property is the line of (today's) Saint Clair Avenue, and at its eastern end, you can just barely discern the name of J. W. Ayd, proprietor of the only grist mill in the township. His descendants organized the the re-naming of Ayd Mill Road. The long diagonal road toward the bottom of the map is (today's) West Seventh Street leading from downtown Saint Paul to Fort Snelling.

The township was named because it was originally the "reserve" for Fort Snelling: empty land to graze the cattle upon, to cut firewood, grow gardens, and whatever else might be necessary to sustain the inhabitants of the Fort.

While some of the names on the map are those of the original settlers: Knappheide, Spangenberg, Otto, Davern; over half of the names: Bayard, Rice, Merriam, were those of land speculators who were holding the property as an investment but did not live there.

*L.G. Bennett, Map of Ramsey County, 1867. Other Township maps in this series are ROSE (Roseville, Falcon Heights, Launderdale); RESERVE (St. Paul's Highland Park, Macalester, Groveland, Crocus Hill, Merriam Park neighborhoods); MOUND VIEW (Arden Hills, Shoreview, Mounds View, New Brighton, North Oaks, Blaine); NEW CANADA (Little Canada, Maplewood, North St. Paul); McLEAN (Dayton's Bluff, east side of St. Paul, Maplewood); WHITE BEAR (Vadnais Heights, White Bear Lake, Gem Lake); SAINT ANTHONY (SE.& NE. Minneapolist St. Anthony Village); and (old) MANOMIN COUNTY (Fridley, Spring Lake Park, Hilltop, Columbia Heights).

Copyright © Donald Empson 1995

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