Peering at the Past – Trains No Longer Stop at Formerly-Flourishing Newhouse

First of a two-part series

Some thriving villages in southeast Minnesota, established in the 1850s and 1860s, especially those served by stagecoaches on territorial roads, met their demise when bypassed by the first railroad tracks in the late 1870s. Contrarily, the village of Newhouse was founded by the Caledonia, Mississippi & Western Railroad Company, which built a station and grain elevator in Spring Grove Township, one and half miles north of the Iowa state line and about halfway between the villages of Spring Grove and Mabel. 

Newhouse, in the 2020s, is no longer a thriving commercial village, reduced to three rural dwellings about eight miles west of Spring Grove and then about one mile south on Houston County Highway 8. Trains no longer stop to build up steam before a rigorous ascent up a steep grade toward Spring Grove. They no longer stop to unload merchandise or add railcars of livestock. The name “Newhouse” survives with the Newhouse Norsemen 4-H club, founded in 1928.

The site was at first known as Newport, probably for Leander Newport, a well-known land speculator. To avoid confusion with Newports in other states, the name was changed to Newhouse in honor of the owner of the land involved, Ole Tollef (Nyhus) Newhouse.

Unlike the more rugged land elsewhere in the township, the prairie property around Newhouse was especially attractive to speculators, who maintained ownership until the depression following the money panic of 1857 convinced them to sell quickly at any price. By the early 1860s, most of the land was in the hands of farmers.

Since Newhouse was near the Winona-Fort Atkinson Indian Trail and near hunting trails leading into Riceford Valley, early settlers told of much Native American activity, including long caravans leaving former camp grounds. One Indian couple became parents overnight after seeking shelter with early settler, Johannes Hallan and his wife. 

A post office was established on March 25, 1880, soon after the railroad had arrived in 1879. Mail service, except for a 20-month hiatus in 1903-04, continued until November 30, 1933. Along with his name given to the town, Ole T. Nyhus (Newhouse), had become one of the early postmasters by 1883. 

The most prosperous period in Newhouse was the 1890s. There was a shoe repair shop, a feed mill and Hans Ellingson made and sold harnesses. Early in that decade, Ole Roppe and Hans Quanrud of Spring Grove started a lumber yard, an enterprise that was gone by 1900. Andrew Peterson Mokasten opened a restaurant and also added income as a barber, trimming whiskers and cutting hair. After that eatery closed, Otto Myten also failed to make a go of his restaurant business.

John Hallan was a blacksmith, who besides shoeing horses and forging plowshares, was an accomplished mechanic who was in great demand for repairing farm machinery. Prior to harvest time, his shop was full of threshing machines and reapers to be overhauled.

No one was more responsible for boosting and maintaining the village economy than Ole O. Lee, who according to one local historian “kept the village alive many years after all other entrepreneurs had gone out of business.” 

The first store in Newhouse was operated by the firm, Johnson & Halvorson, followed by a succession of owners, including entrepreneurs from Mabel. Ole Lee was likely employed by storekeeper John Lien before Lee purchased the building in 1892. He would enjoy rare longevity, operating this mercantile business 35 years until his death in 1927. His son Orlando then assumed proprietorship until retiring in 1946.

In 1890, Joseph Jetson and Andrew J. Hallan built and opened a general store in Newhouse. Five years later, they sold to competitor Ole Lee, who moved the building across the road adjacent to his store before remodeling it. Later, a prominent visitor from Spring Grove described it as “a big double store filled with goods of all kinds and grades from which his customers ought to get good selections.”

Farmer’s Alliance, a political movement in Minnesota during the 1890s, which established grain elevators, cooperative stores, implement businesses and shipping associations, maintained an office in Newhouse along with a livestock shipping operation. There were members throughout the area from Spring Grove, Wilmington, Black Hammer, Newburg and other burgs. Business was substantial until the Alliance ceased to exist in this are in 1907. Their warehouse was purchased by, not surprisingly, Ole Lee.

After the Alliance left town, Lee then began buying and selling grain, clover, timothy, alfalfa and farm seed as well as purchasing wool, which he stored in the former Alliance warehouse along with fencing and other larger hardware.

  The elevator at Newhouse went through a series of owners and operators, including three brothers from Brownsville, followed by several local residents (Peter Newhouse, P. B. Passmour, Eddie Foss). Next came the Milwaukee Elevator Company, which specializing in malting barley, promoted that production by local farmers. It was reported when barley prices were high, there were long lines of wagons waiting to unload. 

About 1920, the Milwaukee company leased the elevator to local farmers who operated it as a feed and seed store. followed by Johnson & Tollefson of Mabel and eventually by – you guessed it – Ole Lee. After his death, his sons continued business until 1944 when the building was razed.

Described as genial, Ole Lee greeted customers for over three decades from behind the counter of his country store in Newhouse. He stocked items from groceries to hardware to dry goods. In addition to farm implements, Lee also marketed carriages, surreys and buggies until automobiles became common.

When travel was more difficult, local dances and weddings might last as long as three days. The Fourth of July was a prominent community celebration as was the 17th of May (Syttende Mai), Norway’s independence day. Those two events featured picnics, dinner, orations and fireworks. The Spring Grove Posten, a Norwegian-language weekly in the 1880s, reported a Syttende Mai Fest during which a homemade cannon exploded, sending shrapnel into merrymakers. No one was seriously injured. To be continued …

Sources: Percival Narveson’s Historical Sketches by Percival Narveson, 2002; “Hamlet Of Newhouse Once A Shipping Point,” by Robert C. Gehl, La Crosse Tribune, 1965; Houston County History, 1982.