ECHO

The village of Echo, named after the township in which it is situated, was founded in August 1884, when the Minneapolis and St. Louis extension was built through Yellow Medicine County. A few settlers located in Echo Township in 1869, but early day settlement was slow.

For many years Echo’s claim to fame was the home of George Brenton Huges and of his newspaper, the Echo Enterprise, which was the only hand-set newspaper in Minnesota, if not in the entire United States. George and his wife worked until two-o’clock every night and until four o’clock on press nights. Huges lived to be 100 years old and was the sole survivor of the Sioux uprising — his parents having fled Nicollet County with him as a baby in the fall of 1862.

Echo became a village in 1892. One reason the village wanted to organize was to license saloons. A saloon license sold for $500 or more annually for as many as four or five saloons, and these fees went a long way toward paying for village services. Echo Township had voted on the liquor question in 1890 when it was approved by 15 votes. The following year licensing was defeated. Year after year the voters either voted to sell liquor or outvoted — and the village remained “dry” until the election of 1951 when municipal liquor was finally approved. Soon after the vote Echo bought a new fire truck. The Granite Falls Tribune reported on Sept. 10, 1914 that “Dip’s Café was raided by Sheriff Homme who seized 39 pints of whiskey, 44 pints of ale, etc. The owner was arrested but denies running a blind pig.”

An interesting story about the settlement of Echo is that regarding their physician, Dr. John Gill, who was helping to survey for the first railroad in 1895; he had also surveyed for the first railroad on the Isthmus of Panama. The doctor was en route to Echo when a blizzard forced him to stay in the village hotel. While he was there a medical emergency arose and he was asked to help with it. He realized then how much this small village needed a doctor, so he decided to stay on and practice medicine, until his death in 1938. Gill was the son of a ship builder.

Rural Route mail delivery began in the county in October of 1900. Edwin Peterson delivered mail from 1921-1959. As a carrier he witnessed tremendous changes. When he started there were two mail routes out of Echo. His route went north of town and was 27 miles. Only three-fourths of a mile was gravel road, while the rest of the route was mud. It took Peterson from early in the morning to nightfall to cover the 27 miles. Horses pulled a buggy or a sleigh, depending on the weather. It got awfully cold in the winter, so he built a small house on the sleigh that contained a small stove. He filled the stove with corncobs. In order to give the horses a day’s rest he would call on a friend who had a motorcycle with a sidecar to drive him along the route.

When automobiles were available Peterson bought a model T Ford and an early model snowmobile. Some of the early snowmobiles were model T Fords converted with a mail order house kit, which included a pair of runners for the front, an extra axle, an extra set of wheels at the rear, and tracks which ran on the two sets of rear wheels. The snowmobiles ran a speed of 15 to 35 miles per hour.

In the early days of rural route mail delivery the postman might be asked to deliver a package of yeast to a farmwife who had to bake bread or to deliver fresh meat to feed a threshing crew. Sometimes they transported doctors or delivered telegrams.

By the time Peterson retired in 1959 the two mail routes out of Echo had been combined, and his route went from 27 miles to 58 miles which he could complete in half a day instead of a whole day.

Another interesting chapter in the history of Echo was that in December of 1923 a fiery cross was found burning on the downtown street. The Echo Enterprise newspaper surmised that the KKK was organized in the village.

Echo’s population reached a total of 490 in 1950, but dropped to 459 in 1960 and, percentagewise, it lost more than any other village in the 1960s, dropping to 356 in 1970.

Sources: History of Lyon County Minnesota, 1912, A.P. Rose; History of Yellow Medicine County; History of Yellow Medicine County, Carl and Amy Narvestad.