Stephen Desnoyer’s Halfway House

By Drew M. Ross

Stephen Desnoyer is said to be the first permanent resident in Rose Township. He built a tavern on the thoroughfare of the St. Anthony/St. Paul Road which ran roughly along the route of today’s Interstate 94. The establishment was situated just west of what would become the Vandalia-Cretin exit. It seemed nearly everyone traveled “this most celebrated” road: stagecoaches with tourists, oxcarts with imported goods, outbound missionaries, dogsleds, and wagons carrying local supplies. And people knew that “[r]efreshments could be had [there] for man and beast.”¹

“Denoye’s [sic] Travelers’ Home and old stand” was a “Half-way House,” a loosely applied moniker to public houses offering food, drink, and rest. His place was almost exactly halfway between St. Anthony and St. Paul at 4.5 miles on the 8.75-mile road. The operation was one of the earliest and lasted longer, perhaps, because Desnoyer had a deep, reliable well for the horses. “He has made a good thing,” noted one writer, “as far as dollars and cents are concerned, out of his house and farm.”²

Locals frequented this place, especially when “Sunday driv[ing].” The tavern was famed for dinners of venison and other game. In the winter, sleigh parties would take a tour to St. Anthony Falls. On the return trip, numerous sleighs accumulated outside, which “made the party livelier and jollier.”³

“But who does not know Desnoyer? Who has not drank some of his rot-gut whisky and miserable brandy?” asked the editor of the Minnesota Weekly Times in 1855. One could make the one-way trip to the falls or other villages without stopping, though the break was welcome to the physical feat of a stagecoach on a rough road. And, apparently, some coach drivers did stop for whiskey, per request of their physicians for their health.⁴

Travelers coming to see St. Anthony Falls likely contributed to Desnoyer’s business, as well. Typically, they arrived on steamboat tours from St. Louis or Galena, visiting the falls as well as Minnehaha Falls and Fort Snelling. The “Fashionable Tour,” as it was known, was first proposed in 1835 by artist George Catlin and grew increasingly popular. In 1854, the Rock Island Railroad completed a spur track from Chicago to the Mississippi River, filling in the last missing passenger link to the East. That June, a promotional Grand Excursion of five steamboats carrying 1,200 passengers—celebrities, businesspeople, politicians, and journalists—made a three-day trip from Chicago to St. Paul. Those early tourists promoted and published their experiences widely. Two years later, an estimated 28,000 people visited St. Paul.⁵

Of course, incidents related to alcohol consumption at the tavern occasionally made the news. Desnoyer was listed as an “Indian trader” and was arrested for selling alcohol to Native people. In more than one instance, guests departing the establishment by wagon, horse, or foot in the middle of winter weren’t found until the spring thaw. And one particular November day in 1874, a headline read, “Desnoyer’s Saloon on the St. Paul Road Sustains Its Reputation.” The newspapers declared a man had been murdered there. The events concerned a few customers on a day-long drinking spree who refused to pay their bill. The bartender shot one patron, who was expected to die. As the remaining drunks set to flee, Desnoyer took hold of a horse and held it in lieu of payment. Calling Desnoyer “the fat old gentleman,” they continued to argue over the bill. In the end, the victim did not die, although the newspapers repeatedly foretold of his imminent death until, suddenly, he was better.⁶

NOTES

1. George E. Warner and Charles M. Foote, History of Ramsey County and the City of St. Paul (Minneapolis: North Star Publishing, 1881), 259; Joseph A. Corrigan, The History of St. Marks and the Midway District (Madison, WI: The Church, 1939), 26-27; “Minnesota Affairs,” Minneapolis Daily Tribune, July 20, 1869, 3.
2. “History of St. Anthony,” Minnesota Weekly Times, September 13, 1856, 2; Frank C. Coolbaugh, “Reminiscences of the Early Days in Minnesota, 1851 to 1861,” Minnesota Historical Society Collections 15 (St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society, 1913), 482; “Minnesota Affairs,” 3.
3. “Forgotten Pioneers VI,” Ramsey County History 5, no. 2 (Fall 1968): 19; Corrigan, 27; Amelia Ullman, “Spring Comes to the Frontier: Reminiscences of Mrs. Joseph Ullman,” Minnesota History 33, no. 5 (Spring 1953): 200.
4. “The Up Country Dottings by the Way, No. II,” Minnesota Weekly Times, July 3, 1855, 1; “History of St. Anthony,” 2. Most statements about whiskey and alcohol in the early years should be read lightly.
5. William E. Lass, “Eden of the West,” Minnesota History 56, no. 4 (Winter 1998): 205.
6. Ullman, 198; “Frozen,” St. Paul Weekly Minne­sotian, January 5, 1856, 3; “Rampant Crime,” Minneapo­lis Daily Tribune, November 12, 1874, 4; “Minnesota News,” Minneapolis Daily Tribune, November 19, 1874, 4.