Speaking of Summit History...

I was just reading my copy of A Grand History: The Summit Hill Neighborhood's First 200 Years (written by Gabrielle Horner, published by the Summit Hill Association in 2010).

What a great book for the local history scholar! As a native St. Paulite and Ramsey Hiller, I mistakenly presumed I wouldn't learn too much by reading Horner's slim book. I was happily wrong.

Now, of course, this is not strictly a Summit Avenue book. Summit Hill includes a midsection stretch of the South side of Summit Avenue and not the whole of the Avenue, but I nonetheless recommend it for anyone who is interested in local history.

Here's a short snippet of what I learned.

Bicycles on Summit

There have been bikes on Summit longer than there has been pavement. There is a photo of a man named John Lawton riding his "safety bicycle" on Summit in the year 1900. Summit was paved with asphalt in about 1915.

Before Black Top

Summit Avenue was first paved with wood. Wood "hunks," 4" x 4" x 10" (or less) and impregnated with creosote to keep them from rotting, were used to pave major street before asphalt was introduced.

(The alley between Summit and Portland, just west of Lexington, still has wood pavement. In that alley, the wood is cut grain up and laid like "cobbles." If you decide to investigate, wear good shoes. Wood cobbles can be slippery.)

Ramsey Street Extension

In 1859, the orthogonal stretch of Summit Avenue was called "Ramsey Street Extension." The map illustration (on page 7) that features this less-than-flattering name for Summit, only shows land west of approximately Dale Street, but educated guessing would tell us that the "Ramsey Street Extension" began at Ramsey Hill. Summit, already platted in 1859 along the bluff overlooking downtown, crossed Ramsey and curved down Summit Court, where it came to its end. Imagine how different Summit would feel if it were still a mere "extension."

Plat Mystery Solved

One of the maps I enjoyed most was by ecologist Daniel Wovcha, author of Minnesota's St. Croix River Valley and Anoka Sandplain: A Guide to Native Habitats. The map (reprinted with permission) on page 5 of A Grand History is a representation of the lands of Summit Hill in 1847, with the current street grid overlaid for reference. I would love to scan the map in for reference, but it is copyrighted material so you will just have to go buy A Grand History from the Summit Hill Association.

The dominant ecosystem of Summit Hill was "Oak Openings," sometimes called oak savanna. Oak Openings is a fire-dependent, savanna type of ecosystem dominated by oak trees; the tree cover is less dense than a forest, having between 10% and 60% canopy. Triangle Park, located at Goodrich and South Dale Street, still has native old-growth burr oaks, offering a glimpse of what the Oak Openings once looked like.

Summit Hill was almost entirely Oak Openings, with a small corner of Big Woods in the southwest corner and, more interestingly to me, a little insert of Prairie from the north. A large swath of Prairie lay north of central Summit Hill, crossing what is now Summit between Grotto and Dale.

It is this little bit of prairie that piqued my attention.

If you have ever looked at a plat map or read your house's legal description, you likely know that the city is divided into subdivisions, "additions" and "outlots" that were added to the city as it grew. One would probably assume that these divisions were added to the city by proximity, with the first new additions being immediately adjacent to downtown, and subsequent additions radiating outward until the City bumped into Minneapolis or some other obvious stopping point.

I have always been curious about Holcomb's Addition. Holmcomb's includes two blocks of Summit, from Grotto to Dale Street (and from Summit extends northward not-quite-to Marshall Avenue), and was platted in 1857, more than 20 years before the land to its East. Holcomb's was an island belonging to the city, but separated from it by a square mile or so of unplatted land for more than a decade: Woodland Park Addition (Stretching from Dale east to Western Avenue) is dated 1870. To illustrate, the map below is a scan from Building Our Future from Our Past: A Report of the Saint Paul Historic Hill District Planning Program (1975), now out of print.

Thanks to A Grand History I now understand why Holcomb's was platted first. It was prairie. No trees to clear, easy building. The more laborious, wooded tracts were left for later development.