Ramsey County History – Fall: “Swede Hollow: Sheltered Society for Immigrants to St. Paul”

Swede Hollow: Sheltered Society for Immigrants to St. Paul
Author: Mollie Price

Swede Hollow was an important St. Paul immigrant neighborhood along Phalen Creek on the city’s East Side. As early as the 1840s, a few hunters and trappers staked claims and an enterprise or two started using water power. In 1865, three Swedish families arrived in the valley, and many more followed in the 1870s. They called it “Svenska Dalen” or Swedish Valley. They constructed homes and put outhouses on stilts over the creek. The author found, through city directories, that most of the residents were employed as laborers in jobs at the railroads or Hamm’s Brewery, located at the north end of the community.

Starting in the 1880s, Italian immigrants took over many of the homes as their predecessors moved into the neighborhoods elsewhere. The newcomers usually had large families and often took in boarders and brought their own culture of religion, festivals, food, and gardens. Water was still drawn from artesian springs in the hillside. By the 1930s, Mexican Americans began to join the earlier groups. City health officials began questioning sanitation in the area and condemned it in 1956. The sixteen remaining families with their eighty-five members were evicted, and their homes burned. The area became abandoned and abused, a victim of illegal dumping. In the 1970s, the area became, however, a nature center and park.
PDF of Price article