M.L. Berg

On the fourth page of his Villard Leader newspaper for Saturday, July 3, 1886, Richard Copeland wrote that the mail route from Villard to Washburn was “the first one established in this portion of Dakota and has been in operation four years. Robert Shaw of Washburn, now gone to his final home, brought the first mail to the Mouse River on August 8, 1882.”

Mary Ann Barnes Williams gives the names of four other men who delivered the mail to Villard in the 1880s. They included Nels Martenson, Holbrook, J. W. McKnight and Harry Stroud. She recounts a somewhat unnerving experience that Stroud had had.

He was on his way back to Washburn from Villard; he had just reached the shores of Strawberry Lake during a violent wind storm on June 11, 1884, and was wondering if he should seek shelter inside a vacant two-story frame house there. As he was standing outside the vacant building, “The structure rose suddenly from its foundation like a balloon; rising about ten feet, it turned in the air and struck the ground, roof downward, and split wide open.” (See Williams, “Pioneer Days,” Book One, page 119).

There is little information available about the carriers employed by George Hofmann over the four year life of his mail contract. Only one of his Native American carriers was named. This was Frank Gardapee. He was already living along the Mouse River, before Villard was settled in 1882. It is unclear just when he was first hired. There is a mention of his being caught in a storm on Feb. 11, 1884, and having to dig a hole in the snow to wait the storm out. He had also lost his way, after going snow-blind. This episode is recounted in the McHenry County centennial book, “McHenry County: Its History and Its People” (Towner, 1985), on page 37. During the winter, Gardapee used dog sleds to get the mail through, instead of the usual horse-drawn carts.

In May, 1884, Frank Gardapee took part in a foot race with two residents of Washburn. They were Andy Erickson, who worked at the Riverview Hotel there, and C. E. Murrell, an employee of the Washburn Times newspaper. Erickson finished in first place, eight feet ahead of Gardapee. Frank Gardapee was called the “Mouse river mail driver.”

Their foot race was discussed on the front page of the Washburn Times for Friday, May 9, 1884. Gardepee’s career came to an abrupt end in November, 1884, four months after the Washburn race. He was captured by a band of vigilantes in northern Stevens County who suspected him – rightly or wrongly – of being a horse thief. Frank Gardapee, as well as two other suspected horse thieves, Ravenwood and Bates, wound up dead at the hands of these vigilantes. His wife remained in McHenry County. And she even took in a foundling that a woman had abandoned on the doorstep of a family in Newport in February or March, 1887, over two years after her husband’s murder (See page four of the Villard Leader newspaper for Saturday, March 5, 1887).

In 1886, at least two mail carriers operated out of Villard. They were Thomas Berry and Ira Whitney, the blacksmith. Thomas Berry was employed from at least March until June, 1886. It seems Berry was then relieved by Ira Whitney, but only for a short time. Whitney’s last delivery was made on July 1,1886, and the Villard to Washburn route was officially ended in that month.

Richard Copeland took the time to note the passing of this original mail route in the pages of his newspaper. In the issue for Saturday, July 3, 1886, he wrote, “Of course, the abandonment of the Washburn route will not affect the postal receipts (Here, Copeland was speaking as the Villard Post Master), but we regret to see the old route go. Like everything else, though, it will soon be forgotten, and the new order of things may please us better.”