Swede Hollow was a neighborhood of Saint Paul, Minnesota

Saint Paul, Minnesota

Saint Paul is the capital and second-most populous city of the U.S. state of Minnesota. The city lies mostly on the east bank of the Mississippi River in the area surrounding its point of confluence with the Minnesota River, and adjoins Minneapolis, the state's largest city...

. It was one of a large group of neighborhoods collectively known as the East Side, lying just to the east of the near-downtown Railroad Island neighborhood, and at the northwestern base of Dayton's Bluff

Dayton's Bluff

Dayton's Bluff is a neighborhood located on the east side of the Mississippi in the southeast part of the city of Saint Paul, Minnesota, which has a large residential district on the plateau extending backward from its top. The name of the bluff commemorates Lyman Dayton, for whom a village and a...

. It was capped in the north by the sprawling Hamm's Brewery

Hamm's Brewery

Hamm's is the name of a former American brewery in Saint Paul, Minnesota. Hamm's breweries were also found in other cities, such as San Francisco.-History:...

 (with its imposing Hamm family mansion), and in the south by the historic Seventh Street Improvement Arches

Seventh Street Improvement Arches

The Seventh Street Improvement Arches are a double-arched masonry highway bridge that formerly spanned the St. Paul and Duluth Railroad tracks in St. Paul, Minnesota. The Seventh Street Improvement Arches are historically significant for its rarity and the technically demanding nature of its...

. Although one of the oldest settlements in the city, it was also arguably the poorest as each wave of immigrants settled in the valley. Swedes, Poles, Italians and Mexicans all at one point called the valley home. A similar community just downstream called Connemara Patch also existed for Irish immigrants.

History

Originally the area was a small, steep, wooded ravine cut through by Phalen Creek. The first settler, Edward Phelan

Edward Phelan

Edward Phelan, also Phalen or Felyn, was an early settler of Saint Paul, Minnesota. Phelan was born in approximately 1811 in Derry, Ireland and later became, along with John Hays and William Evans, one of the first settlers of Saint Paul. Phelan was later accused of Hays' murder, the first ever in...

, moved there in 1841. Phelan fled Minnesota in 1850 after perjury charges arose but not before being leaving a mark that would change what was once Mill Creek to Phalen. Among the earliest inhabitants to settle permanently in the isolated spot were Swedish immigrants. First arriving in the 1850s, they gave their new home the name "Svenska Dalen," a title (or, rather, its English translation) which remained long after the original settlers had moved on, to be replaced by a wave of Italian immigrants in the early twentieth century. At the time of the neighborhood's demise in the mid-fifties, it had attracted a collection of Mexican families as well.

Although remembered with a certain sense of nostalgia today, it is not an exaggeration to describe the former area as a true slum

Slum

A slum, as defined by United Nations agency UN-HABITAT, is a run-down area of a city characterized by substandard housing and squalor and lacking in tenure security. According to the United Nations, the percentage of urban dwellers living in slums decreased from 47 percent to 37 percent in the...

. People and industries occupying the surrounding "upper" neighborhoods used the Hollow for an impromptu dump, which the inhabitants down below routinely scavenged for clothing, metals, building supplies, and even shoe repair needs. Several gristmill

Gristmill

The terms gristmill or grist mill can refer either to a building in which grain is ground into flour, or to the grinding mechanism itself.- Early history :...

s operated on the creek by the 1850s. In addition railroad tracks were built along the creek in 1865, because the creek bed provided a relatively easy grade up from the Mississippi River

Mississippi River

The Mississippi River is the largest river system in North America. Flowing entirely in the United States, this river rises in western Minnesota and meanders slowly southwards for to the Mississippi River Delta at the Gulf of Mexico. With its many tributaries, the Mississippi's watershed drains...

 compared to the bluffs in other places.

Quite remarkable for a neighborhood in the heart of a major American city of the mid-twentieth century (and even more so considering the challenging climate

Climate of Minnesota

The climate of Minnesota is typical of a continental climate, with cold winters and hot summers. Minnesota's location in the Upper Midwest allows it to experience some of the widest variety of weather in the United States, with each of the four seasons having its own distinct characteristics...

 of the Twin Cities region), Swede Hollow was never electrified, and plumbing conditions were extremely primitive. The residences were constructed almost entirely out of recovered and scrapped building materials, and the entire affair was serviced by a single meandering dirt road. Toilet facilities consisted of outhouses constructed directly over Phalen Creek. The original inhabitants of Swede Hollow got their water from springs and used Phelan Creek as their sewer, leading to water and sanitation problems.

Destruction

So squalid were the conditions of the Hollow, in fact, that in 1956 the entire neighborhood was declared a health hazard by the city. The last remaining families were forcibly evicted, and the entire housing stock was burnt to the ground on December 11 of the same year. At one time (1905) as many as 1,000 people called the tiny little glade their home, although there was much less remaining (14 families in all) at the time of the December 11, 1956 clearing.

Today

Soon after the destruction the area became a dumping ground and gathering place for the homeless. In the 1970s the valley was cleaned up and was designated a nature center in 1976. A 1917 report remarked, "Phalen Creek and the banks of this stream are ideal for park purposes, while in their present state they constitute a menace to the health of the residents and to the community at large." The area remains uninhabited to this day. The original woodland state has returned (although some of the building foundations still remain), the creek was partially restored, and the entire valley has been made part of Swede Hollow Park, a city park. The trail running along the west edge of Swede Hollow is the Bruce Vento Regional Trail

Bruce Vento Regional Trail

The Bruce Vento Regional Trail is a rail trail in the cities of Vadnais Heights, Gem Lake, Maplewood, and Saint Paul, Minnesota, USA.The trail occupies an abandoned Burlington Northern Railroad corridor and intersects with the Gateway State Trail in Maplewood and continues to just east of Lake...

, paved on the former right-of-way of the Northern Pacific Railway's Skally Line that ran from St. Paul to Duluth.

Connemara Patch

Just south of Swede Hollow (and downstream of it) was a lesser-known Irish neighborhood called Connemara

Connemara

Connemara is a district in the west of Ireland consisting of a broad peninsula between Killary Harbour and Kilkieran Bay in the west of County Galway.-Overview:...

 Patch. It was so named after the original home of the group that was settled there, who arrived in the United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 under the sponsorship of Archbishop John Ireland

John Ireland (archbishop)

John Ireland was the third bishop and first archbishop of Saint Paul, Minnesota . He became both a religious as well as civic leader in Saint Paul during the turn of the century...

, who settled them on prairie claims near Graceville, Minnesota

Graceville, Minnesota

At the 2000 census, there were 605 people, 257 households and 149 families residing in the city. The population density was 1,007.7 per square mile . There were 283 housing units at an average density of 471.4 per square mile . The racial makeup of the city was 99.50% White, 0.17% Native...

. When the original rural colonization plan was aborted by the long, blizzard

Blizzard

A blizzard is a severe snowstorm characterized by strong winds. By definition, the difference between blizzard and a snowstorm is the strength of the wind. To be a blizzard, a snow storm must have winds in excess of with blowing or drifting snow which reduces visibility to 400 meters or ¼ mile or...

-wracked winter of 1880 (a season so harsh that it was immortalized by the Laura Ingalls Wilder

Laura Ingalls Wilder

Laura Elizabeth Ingalls Wilder was an American author who wrote the Little House series of books based on her childhood in a pioneer family...

 book The Long Winter

The Long Winter (novel)

The Long Winter is a Newbery Honor novel by Laura Ingalls Wilder, first published in 1940. The story is set in South Dakota during the severe winter of 1880-1881, when Laura turned fourteen...

), the desperate immigrants were resettled along lower Phalen Creek in the area between East Seventh and East Fourth streets as a stopgap measure—one which ultimately became a permanent situation. The legendary Irish language

Irish language

Irish , also known as Irish Gaelic, is a Goidelic language of the Indo-European language family, originating in Ireland and historically spoken by the Irish people. Irish is now spoken as a first language by a minority of Irish people, as well as being a second language of a larger proportion of...

 storyteller Éamon a Búrc

Éamon a Búrc

Éamon a Búrc was a tailor and Irish storyteller or seanchaí.Born to an Irish-speaking family in Carna, County Galway, Ireland, Éamon a Búrc, was brought by his parents to Graceville, Minnesota in 1880. Their passage was paid for by Archbishop John Ireland, who wished to fill up the Minnesota...

 spent several years in the district before a railroad accident took his leg and caused him to return to his village in County Galway

County Galway

County Galway is a county in Ireland. It is located in the West Region and is also part of the province of Connacht. It is named after the city of Galway. Galway County Council is the local authority for the county. There are several strongly Irish-speaking areas in the west of the county...

, Ireland

Ireland

Ireland is an island to the northwest of continental Europe. It is the third-largest island in Europe and the twentieth-largest island on Earth...

.

Like Swede Hollow, Connemara Patch was eventually cleared of its inhabitants. The remnants of the neighborhood were completely destroyed by urban renewal in the 1950s. Interstate 94

Interstate 94

Interstate 94 is the northernmost east–west Interstate Highway, connecting the Great Lakes and Intermountain regions of the United States. I-94's western terminus is in Billings, Montana at a junction with Interstate 90; its eastern terminus is the U.S...

 currently occupies a substantial portion of the old enclave. The rest of the site is largely vacant, except for a few dilapidated industrial structures.

Further reading

• Swede Hollow Continues Immigrant Tradition with a Focus on Water Minnesota Department of Health
• From Swede Hollow to Arlington Hills, From Snoose Boulevard to Minnehaha Parkway: Swedish Neighborhoods of the Twin Cities Macalester College
  Macalester College
  Macalester College is a private, coeducational liberal arts college located in Saint Paul, Minnesota. It was founded in 1874 as a Presbyterian-affiliated but nonsectarian college. Its first class entered September 15, 1885. The college is located on a campus in a historic residential neighborhood...
  
  
• Welcome, newbie, to the Swede Hollow club East Side Review