St. Cloud Sites

The Works Progress Administration (WPA) built the Alice Whitney Park Dam on the Sauk River in St. Cloud MN in 1938.  WPA workers also built steps going down the riverbank to the dam and a path along the river.  The dam was  meant to provide a swimming hole for park users. The dam was about 4 feet tall and provided a walking path to get across the river, connecting Whitney Park and Sauk River Park.  All of the stone and wood was cut by WPA workers.  The dam’s purpose was to raise the water level of the Sauk River to create a...

Clark field is an athletic field built in St. Cloud by the Work Projects Administration (WPA) and the National Youth Administration (NYA), set up for Technical High School by the principal at the time, Elizabeth Clark. When the field was dedicated in 1942, a program for the event deemed that they dedicated the field to Tech High. Dedicated to the school by the Grace McConnell property, although it was originally a pig farm. Built by students under the NYA and the WPA, it was finished in 1942 and named in honor of Elizabeth Clark. The NYA was originally set up by...

The First Avenue Wall located in front of Riverview was one of many improvements made on the St. Cloud Teacher’s College campus in the 1930s. Under President George Selke, the building of retaining walls such as the ones off First Avenue took place in the summer of 1936, made possible with use of W.P.A. labor in conjunction with NYA. The total cost for general building repairs, construction of steps and stairways, landscaping, and retaining walls at the time was $20,400.54. The purpose of building retaining walls on campus was not only for aesthetics, but for convenience and to prevent drainage...

A Works Progress Administration (WPA) group laid the parkway and constructed the base for a monument to James J. Hill on the banks of Lake George in Saint Cloud's Eastman Park. Hill, historian Bill Morgan noted, had established the Great Northern Car Shops in the neighboring city of Waite Park and “made enemies among his competitors and employees during his 60-year career,” but remained “a mythic hero to the Great Northern shopworkers of St. Cloud and Waite Park.” While an earlier submission by a former Great Northern carshop employee, Jacob L. Hohman, had been rejected in the 1920s, progress toward...

The Selke Field Stone Wall was built in 1937 and was funded by the Works Progress Administration (W.P.A) during the Great Depression. Chris Tessari, the construction crew foreman, and Harry Phinney, the W.P.A representative, both played a large role in the erection of the wall. By 1946, the field was officially renamed Selke Field, after George A. Selke, a 1913 graduate and former President of St. Cloud State University (1927-1947). The granite used to build the wall was quarried out of St. Cloud State’s nearby quarries. The 3,510-foot wall’s estimated cost was $40,000-$50,000. With inflation calculated in, today’s (2020) cost would...

The St. Cloud Historical Marker in St. Cloud MN is a site that was constructed in 1937, by the NYA, a sub-unit of the WPA. The site was designed by A. R. Nichols and is a historical marker that commemorates the first commercial granite quarry in Minnesota, opened by Breen and Young in 1868, that was very important for the growth of St. Cloud. It was built from granite stones from the quarries located nearby, with rough and pointed rocks, unlike other markers and monuments with their more formal designs. It was placed on the side of highway 10 just...