Willmar Municipal Utilities

Our story, like that of every other electrical generation facility, should begin in 1831, when Michael Faraday produced the world’s first electrical generator.

Actually, since this is a complete utilities system, our story goes back beyond that to the time when people began using the water of what would, centuries later, come to be known as Foot and Willmar Lakes. They were here long before the first white people came to this area. No one knows how many red men availed themselves of their sparkling, clear water.

Berger Thorson, the first permanent resident of what is now the City of Willmar, hauled water from them in buckets to serve his needs, until he was killed by Indians during the Uprising. Erick Nelson, the first post-Uprising resident of this area, relied upon them for his water supply, and when A. S. Lybe, the first storekeeper in what was to become Willmar, moved his stock of goods from New London to set up the Sutler’s Store, which he hoped would serve the needs of the advancing rail road track laying crews, he depended upon them for his water supply, too.

The body of water which we know as Foot and Willmar Lakes has served the people who lived here before there was a town, the residents and some businesses and industries in the growing village and, finally, it has become a part of the City of Willmar’s utility system.

Thorson, Lybe and Nelson all lived very close to the lakes, with Thorson settling in what is now the Oak Lane area on the east side of the big point, Nelson building across the bay and Lybe setting up shop where today’s Ella Avenue crosses the lake, near Seventh Street NW.

All three lived close enough to the lakes to draw water from them easily and to use that water for drinking and other household purposes, because it was clear enough and pure enough to be used safely.

As what was to become today’s Willmar received the first of its permanent settlers in 1869 … Lybe, A. E. Rice, John Paulson, Erick Nelson and the man who built the Herrick House hotel … the lakes became their water supply, too.

Lybe was appointed Willmar’s first postmaster, when a post office was established here in 1869, but discovered that his store was just a few feet outside the village limits, so he had to move the store, which was also the post office, into the new town or give up the job. He moved it about three hundred yards south of its original location, but still built near enough to the lakes to draw water conveniently.

When the railroad’s track-laying crews reached Willmar December 23, 1869, they closed up shop for the winter. This was, literally, the end of the line, even though one train did come this far. That wasn’t intentional. Litchfield was supposed to be the western terminus of the line until the spring of 1870, but one train crew had heard that the track had been laid and went on through to Willmar before the winter really closed in and made the new tracks impassable.

1870 became a very important year for this area and its new towns. Willmar had been chosen as a division point of the rapidly expanding raiI road long before the tracks reached the little skeleton of a town. Later, it was to become the place where the east-west rail line was intersected by another line, which ran from Duluth to Sioux City. The St. Paul & Pacific Railroad built a station here in the spring of 1870, followed shortly by the construction of a railroad-owned grain elevator. These, together with Lybe’s trading post, the Paulson & Rice General Store and the Herrick House, gave the burgeoning town a good start.

There was more to come, however. When this part of the Minnesota Territory was opened to settlement, two counties were organized from land which had been part of Davis and Meeker counties. The northern new county was named Monongalia (derived from Monongahela, a Pennsylvania river area which many of the new county’s residents once called home). The southern county was named Kandiyohi (from the Dakotah name for the lakes it encompassed). That was in 1856. By 1870 the new Monongalia County had a population of about 3,400, while the new Kandiyohi County had only half as many residents.

That small number of people really didn’t need two governments so, as an economy measure, a merger of the two counties was proposed. A referendum was held on the question and the proposition for merger carried handily. The new county was given the name Kandiyohi without opposition, but the matter of a county seat was a different story. Residents of former Monongalia County wanted the county seat in Willmar, since it was already the railroad’s division point, and they believed it would grow more rapidly than any other community in the new county.

The residents of Kandiyohi County, on the other hand, wanted Kandiyohi Station to be the county seat, since it had been serving in that capacity for several years and was, at the time, more developed than Willmar.

The people in the southern half of the new county backed a senator from Hutchinson who promised to keep the county seat in Kandiyohi Station, while residents of the former Monongalia County elected Andrew Railson to the legislature as a representative, pledged to move the county seat to Willmar. The senator blocked all of Railson’s attempts at legislating the change until the day he fell ill, and Railson got his bill passed in the House and then in the Senate and then signed by the Governor, all in one day! That was when Willmar became the county seat, which increased, even more, its opportunities for rapid growth.