Daily Globe

A GLOBE MAN AT JORDAN.

One of the Flourishing Towns of Minnesota.

[Correspondence of The Globe.]

Jordan, Feb. 27.—This flourishing town situated in the Minnesota Valley, Scott county, just thirty-nine miles from St. Paul, deserves more than a passing notice. It is easily accessible from all parts of the State by the Minneapolis and St. Louis and St. Paul and Sioux City railroads. Geographically, it is within four miles of the centre of Scott county, which is traversed from North to South by the first, and from Northeast to Southwest by the latter of these two great lines of railway. The town site occupies a pleasant valley environed by hills, and easily approached by some six or eight good wagon roads from as many different directions, connecting the town with the fine farming lands which surround it. A reference to the shipping books of the two railroads above mentioned shows an amount of business not exceeded by any other town in the Minnesota valley, save Mankato, and prepares one for the life and stir which the town exhibits. Among the business enterprises deserving special attention, first and foremost are the Nicolin, and the Fess Bros., Wells & Co. Merchant Mills, the former of eight and the latter of six run of burrs, finished and furnished throughout in the most perfect manner and excelled by none in the State. Both mills are furnished with steam as well as water power and consume annually over 400,000 bushels of wheat in the manufacture of the celebrated patent process Minnesota flour. This large amount of our great staple embraces only about one-half of the quantity annually received here from farmers' wagons. Connected with this immense delivery of wheat a large retail trade exists as a matter of course, but one is scarcely prepared to see the mammoth business house of Frank Nicolin, which is fairly metropolitan in extent. The Nicolin block is of brick—150 by 66 feet and two stories in height, occupied below by Mr. N. as a general merchandise store and above as a hall, which seats over 1,000 people, and the magnificent and colossal proportions of which inspires the beholder with amazement. This hall, we are informed, is quite frequently well filled on occasions of public entertainments.

In addition to the mammoth establishment of Mr. Nicolin, Messrs. Smith, Schriver, Seifert, Shafer, Sandahl and others are also engaged in general merchandising, in large and commodious stores, while other branches of trade are quite well represented.

Besides the manufactories of flour there are two large breweries, a fine brick yard which makes a cream brick of excellent quality, much of which is exported: wagon shops, pump and fanning-mill factories, cigar manufactory and other minor industries, which all tend to build up a thriving and prosperous city. Of public buildings, Jordan has five churches, two graded schools, a Masonic hall, and last, but not least, good hotels. A fine quality of building stone close at hand, with lumber and brick in inexhaustible quantities, renders building cheap and easy. Jordan was platted in the year 1856 but never acquired any considerable amount of improvement till after the coming of the railroad and more especially within the past three or four years when it has fairly rushed ahead. Nor has foreign capital aided to any extent to develop this thriving town. Every dollar, so to speak, invested here was the reward of honest business and the result of a location central to a large area of the choicest of farming lands. Its present population is over thirteen hundred (1,300), and with a class of reliable, energetic and public-spirited citizens and business men alive to its interests, Jordan has certainly a brilliant future before it.

B.