145 Main Street West
Sleepy Eye, MN, USA

National Register of Historic Places - C. Berg's Hotel

Statement of Significance:

The C. Berg Hotel is locally significant under National Register Criterion A for its association to the broad patterns of our history in the area of commerce. After the opening of the Sleepy Eye Flour Mill in 1882, the city came to play an important role in the economic development of central Brown County. The mill’s expansion spurred rapid growth in the downtown commercial district, which provided the surrounding farms and hamlets with retail, service, and banking industries, as well as social and cultural opportunities.

The C. Berg Hotel is locally significant under National Register Criterion A for its association to the broad patterns of our history in the area of commerce. After the opening of the Sleepy Eye Flour Mill in 1882, the city came to play an important role in the economic development of central Brown County. The mill’s expansion spurred rapid growth in the downtown commercial district, which provided the surrounding farms and hamlets with retail, service, and banking industries, as well as social and cultural opportunities.

The Berg Hotel is locally significant under National Register Criterion A for its association to the broad patterns of our history in the area of commerce. After the opening of the Sleepy Eye Flour Mill in 1882, the city came to play an important role in the economic development of central Brown County. The mill’s expansion spurred rapid growth in the downtown commercial district, which provided the surrounding farms and hamlets with retail, service, and banking industries, as well as social and cultural opportunities.

The Berg Hotel — advertised as the “only first-class hotel in the city — offered accommodations for travelers who came to Sleepy Eye, particularly business visitors to the commercial district and the flour mill. Its dining room also served as an informal community center, hosting diverse civic and social organizations.

The period of significance begins in 1899, the hotel’s construction date, and ends in 1950, when the Berg family sold the hotel. The building is significant within two statewide historic contexts, “Railroads and Agricultural Development 1870-1940” and “Railroad Development in Minnesota, 1862-1956.”

The City of Sleepy Eye

Founded in 1872, the town of Sleepy Eye came relatively late in the settlement of Brown County. Much of the land in the eastern half of the county had been bought up quickly when it first became available following the signing of the Treaties of Mendota and Traverse de Sioux in 1851. These treaties between the United States government and indigenous representatives saw the Dakota give up their rights to most of southern Minnesota, and led to the creation of the Upper and Lower Sioux Reservations in 1853 — land which included a ten-mile-wide swath of land directly south of the Minnesota River in Brown County

Euro-American settlement followed rapidly as settlers and land speculators bought up the rich farmland of Brown County. Transportation routes were oriented to the river, although farms and crossroads hamlets might be found away from the Minnesota River. One observer noted that the population grew sparse west of New Ulm, stating, “Only here and there is found a settler.

The U.S.-Dakota War of 1862 changed all of that, as government policy shifted to removal of native populations and nullification of various treaties. A new land rush developed in its wake, as settlers some who had received checks from the federal government as claims for damages — grabbed up this newly available prime farmland.

The construction of the Winona and St. Peter Railroad, extending west from New Ulm in 1872, transformed the region. Typically, the railroad established towns every ten to twelve miles as track was laid toward South Dakota, and Sleepy Eye (1872), Walnut Grove (1874), Springfield (1877), and Lamberton (1878) were all platted by the late 1870s. Sleepy Eye’s plat was filed on September 18, 1872, by Walter Brackenridge, a Rochester lawyer for the railroad, and Thomas Allison, a settler who was living near Sleepy Eye Lake. Named after a Dakota leader, the village was incorporated six years later. There was an early controversy about the name of the new town. Citizens voted in January 1880 to change its name to Loreno, unhappy with the prominent association with a Dakota Indian, then reversed itself a year later, returning to the older title of Sleepy Eye Lake. The commercial district grew up just south of the railroad depot, with Christian Emmerich building the first hotel on the northwest comer of Main Street and First Avenue

It was a boom town in those early decades, especially after the railroad constructed a branch to Redwood Falls in 1877. The new line encouraged farmers to expand wheat production by providing reliable and relatively fast transportation for their crops. Between 1890 and 1900, the percentage of land farmed in Redwood County grew from forty-six to ninety percent, with more than a third given over to wheat production — with all shipments funneled through Sleepy Eye. By 1880, the village had reached a population of 1,300 residents.

Soon after the town was organized, German immigrant Carl Berg opened his first hotel, a simple wood frame two story building with a saloon on the first floor. Berg was born in Mecklenberg, Germany, on July 17, 1846, coming to the United States in 1855. After fourteen years in Milwaukee, he moved to Minnesota and acquired a farm in Milford Township, Brown County, in 1870. Finally, in 1874, he and his wife — with whom he would have eight children — decided to abandon the farm and open a saloon and hotel in Sleepy Eye. A New Ulm newspaper announced, “The Farmers and Travelers Hotel of Charles Berg will be opened on Sunday evening, June 28, 1874, with a free lunch and dance. The best accommodation of the guest’s care is exercised.” The new hostelry’s name was soon changed to the Minnesota House. Sanborn maps show that Berg’s building was located on lot 12, on the street comer, with a large one-and-a-half story bam along the alley. Early competition included the Lorena House and the Exchange Hotel.