Sherburne History Center Blog

This past week Independent School District 728, the district encompassing Elk River, commemorated the 85 anniversary of the opening of the Elk River High School.  Rather than honor the building and its years of service, I thought it more important to explore the life of one truly dedicated and interesting educator: Robert Handke.             Hired as superintendent of the Elk River Schools in 1925, Robert Handke served for 30 some years as the leader of Elk River education.  Under his watch, Elk River High School, the current Handke Center housing community education, was built.  The brick monument of today replaced a smaller school described by the Elk River Star News as “a 50 year old frame building pitifully overcrowded and already waiting for fire and safety inspectors to declare it unsafe.” Elkhi Stadium, the location for the first organized hockey in Elk River, along with baseball and football were buil...

Newspapers serve as the first recorders of history.  Their content provides invaluable information.  A truly unique collection of newspapers published by the Becker Schools reside in the collections of the Sherburne History Center Library and Archives.  These papers provide unique insight into the community and the activities of the area.  Known simply as The Beacon , the collection of newspapers ranges from 1942 to 1944.  Publishing in the midst of the war, the reporters for the school paper took a very serious tone while they provided news of the schools and of the community.  An example of the serious tone of the paper, the front pages of the December 10, 1942 The Beacon reported the details of the draft registration scheduled for the week of December 18 to December 24, 1942.  The paper also reported on the scheduled blackout test on December 14.  “In Becker the fire bell will be rung at intervals of 5 seconds as a signal that the bla...

Recently, drinking with friends, the topic of wolves in Sherburne County came up for discussion.  Someone had seen two wolves running through their cut fields in recent weeks (this would have been in the middle of December, 2015).  It inspired me to seek a few details about the wolf population in the County.  Reading the newspapers of 1900, particularly the Sherburne County Star News , there appears to be a very large population of wolves in the county.  The spring of 1900 the newspapers reported some success for the wolf hunters of Sherburne County.  In Blue Hill Township on May 10, 1900 the paper reported, “the wolf hunters are camped near Almond Thompson’s house and are doing good work.  Up to Saturday night they had secured 14 wolves.”  In the same newspaper, reporting outside of Elk River, “Eben and Elmer Ingersoll caught four young wolves one day last week.”  Clearly a large population of wolves lived in Sherburne County.  Unfo...