The Hill

Walleye Pondere returned to the Shaktenasen River and founded a trading post in what would become The Hill neighborhood of Central City. His outpost catered to the trappers who used the lake and the river to navigate the backcountry. 1819-1852: Civilization vs Nature

1873

The Swenson family homesteaded on the backside of The Hill, founding a Scandinavian community near where Walleye Pondere had established his trading post. Several other Swedish families homesteaded near them, and a group of Norwegians settled into the area a couple miles north. The Swedes and the Norwegians established respective Lutheran Churches. Throughout the final decades of the nineteenth century, the Lutheran congregations of The Hill continued to fracture and split, creating a multitude of micro-communities within the single, predominantly Scandinavian settlement.1852-1894: Competing Forms of Civilization - Government, Business, and Industry

1884

The rural communities that stretched around the northwestern corner of Central City, encompassing the area that would become the neighborhoods of Long Beach, The Heights, Waite Park, and The Hill, incorporated as Jefferson Township. 1852-1894: Competing Forms of Civilization - Government, Business, and Industry

1920

By 1920, The Hill had become a bedroom community for people who worked in Midtown, Uptown, or Downtown. CC State Faculty members, office workers, bankers, doctors, insurance agents, lawyers, and industry executives painted Anglo-Saxon names on their mail boxes in what had long been an area dominated by Scandinavian farmers.1894-1950 Development of Standards, Tradition, and Expectation

1932

Central City Annexed Jefferson Township, a municipal government that served the rural areas that would become The Hill, Waite Park, The Heights, and Long Beach. This act created the modern boundary of Central City. 1894-1950 Development of Standards, Tradition, and Expectation