George Ducklow – Spring Valley Real Estate Developer

Olivet Trumped by Booming Spring Valley

[Published December 31, 2010]

George Ducklow, son of Thomas and Elizabeth Ducklow, ran a successful mercantile business in the small hamlet of Olivet Wisconsin for many years.  But by the late 1890s Olivet was in economic decline. Selling implements and general merchandise had been successful for George, but it became clear by 1890 that Olivet was not going to grow into the city early settler’s dreamed of.  The long-hoped for railroad and associated rail station never materialized. The lumber men who had once created a demand for goods and services had moved to timber stands further north, along with the two or three active lumber mills that once called Olivet home.  The logged-off forestland had been taken over by farmers and their families.  George’s mercantile business evolved from serving lumberjacks and sawyers to serving men and families of agriculture.  He no doubt met this transition by offering merchandise to meet the needs of pioneer farmers (e.g., dynamite to blow out tree stumps, one-bottom plows by John Deere, seed planters, etc.).  But there was a fundamental issue with Olivet – with no train there was no dominant reason for area farmers to conduct business there. Farmers took much of their trade to Ellsworth or River Falls because these communities had rail service that offered them links to commodity markets in St. Paul and Minneapolis and beyond. 

While Olivet’s fortunes fell in the 1880s and into the 1890s, Spring Valley, the once quiet and sparely populated valley five miles to the north, had suddenly become a boomtown.  This was thanks to the discovery and subsequent commercialization of iron ore mining in the early 1890s by the Eagle Iron Company. Some hopeful prognosticators of the era felt that Spring Valley was going to become a large city, perhaps largest city in Western Wisconsin! Booming Spring Valley offered George new opportunity to renew his business so by1898, George decided to move his store from Olivet to Spring Valley.  Perhaps the key to George’s decision was the addition of the railroad spur in 1893 connecting Spring Valley to Woodville and the main rail trunk between Chicago and St. Paul.   The primary purpose of the rail line was to ship smelted iron to regional factories, but the new rail station also provided area farmers with a gateway to agricultural markets, and offered retailers efficient transportation to receive their merchandise.

Now because Spring Valley was a boomtown in this period, all existing buildings and platted land were in high demand.  All sorts of investors and opportunists where searching for a space to set-up shop.  Money and hope poured in Spring Valley in the early 1890s and continued up until the early 1900s. Practically speaking, if you wanted to open a retail business you needed to buy a lot (owned by early-on non-local investors) and build your own building. And this is apparently what George Ducklow did.  In 1899, in partnership with his relatively new son-in-law George LaGrander (he and Nellie Ducklow married in1895), together built a new general store on the corner of Glade and Central Avenues in Spring Valley (today this location is directly east of the City Municipal building.)  Not many details of this building have been discovered and the building was razed in the 1980s.  There is one photograph known to this author that shows a small portion of the front entry to the building.

It is not clear why, but after just one year of operation, George sold this Glade Avenue store to a man named Jerome Baker Smith. Mr. Smith used the building to retail shoes and grocery items.  A number of reasons seem possible for George’s decision to sell: Perhaps it didn’t have the traffic he expected, or he found it too small, or, most possible, he was made an offer during the boom years which gave him a nice profit.  Whatever his reason, George Ducklow sold his first building in Spring Valley after just one year of operation.

Left: Glimpse of George Ducklow's first building in Spring Valley, built in 1899.  Picture was taken circa 1965.  The building still appears to be an operating grocery store--with a sign for meat in the window and a "Hires Root Beer" ad on the edge of the building. The paper boy is the son of Beaula Thompson.  Picture used with permission frrom the photograph collection of Beaula Thompson.

Right: George Ducklow's second building in Spring Valley built in 1900. Picture taken circa 1958 while it was being operated by Clifford (CW) Arneson as a grocery store.  Picture from Doug Blegen's book called Spring Valley Early Days, used with permission. 

Then in 1900, sans a building to sell merchandise, George built yet another general store, this one on the main drag of Spring Valley—on the SW corner of First Street and McKay Avenue (directly south of the present-day Spring Valley Drug).  It is not clear if George LaGrander helped him again with this building project, but seems possible.  It was this McKay Avenue building that George continued his mercantile business for several years until his retirement estimated to have occurred between 1906 and 1910 (when he was between 55 and 59 years old).  George had chronic asthma and apparently the long store hours were taking a toll.  So with the profits from the sale of his main-street building, he bought a farm in Gilman Township and raised sheep.  He and wife Emma farmed in Gilman until his death in 1928 (see footnote).

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Footnotes:

(1) It seems odd that you would leave a relatively clean retail business and go into sheep farming due to asthma health reasons, but this what was reported in George’s obiturary.

(2) An estimated history of George Ducklow's second building (corner of First & McKay) is believed to be:

1901-1906 Ducklow Mercantile

1906-1920 Geving and Gaadner

1920-1950 Clifford Arneson’s Grocery Store

1950-1970 Hardware Hank Hardware

1970-Present Mark Anderson Veterinary Supply Offices / Warehouse

(3) The estimated history of George’s first building (corner of Central & Glade) is believe to be:

1899-1900 George Ducklow Mercantile

1900-1930 J.B. Baker’s Shoe and Grocery

1930 Alexander “Sandy” Anderson

McCardles

Geroge Breitinger

Gueldner

Stan Andeson

John Rosentreter

1980s- Torn-Down

(4) George continued in the real estate development vein for a while.  He was involved in building at least one home on Church Hill.  He also likely engaged his son Vern in the business of building as the 1905 Census lists Vern as a carpenter’s apprentice.

(5) Information gathered from Doug Blegen’s Spring Valley Early Days, Page 421, George Ducklow’s obituary and Emma Ducklow’s obituary.

(6) It is also notable, that the nation suffered a terrible depression from 1893 to 1896, called the Panic of 1893. In addition to the depression, many Midwest farmers were suffering through drought conditions. No doubt these facts too played a role in George’s decision to pull out of Olivet and try again in Spring Valley.


(7) Both the Glade Ave and McKay Ave buildings had similar entrances: The door framing was recessed into the building forming a nook; a post formed building's "corner" to support the weight of the upper level structure.   This recessed entrance appears to be an "architectural signature" of George's building design.  You can see the posts clearly in both photographs.

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