ROCHESTER – Two years before Minnesota became a state, two German brothers set up shop near the emerging community of Rochester.
The farm, owned by George Stoppel and his brother Franz Joseph, grew along with the city’s growth. The land has fallen into disrepair in recent years, but the Olmsted County History Center has plans to improve it.
Center officials are raising $3 million to renovate and expand Stoppel Farm as a re-creation of life in the 1800s, which they hope will be the first step toward expanding the center’s campus.
“The Stoppel Farm is going through a transition right now,” said Wayne Gannaway, executive director of the history center. “It was in bad shape and needed to be restored and put to good use or put to some other purpose.”
The history center has already secured just over $800,000 in funding from the Jeffries Family Foundation, which focuses on preserving historic sites in the Midwest, and local officials are also counting on a $500,000 state Legacy Fund grant that will go toward repairing the farm’s smokehouse.
They hope to raise the remaining $3 million over the next two years to restore the farm’s barn, Stoppel’s home, and the cave that the Stoppels dug where they spent their first winter on the property. If all goes well, the farm restoration will be completed in 2028.
“Frankly, the farm buildings aren’t going to last much longer,” Gannaway said. “They’re not going to last much longer than that, so we need to act now. We need to act urgently.”
The History Center purchased the farm 50 years ago and built a museum nearby to take advantage of the property. Prior to the museum’s acquisition, the Stoppel family had been the primary caretakers of the farm for several generations (with the exception of a sale to a Mayo Clinic physician in the 1950s), and had built additions on top of the log cabin that the brothers originally built in 1857.
The family replaced the log cabin with a stone home using limestone they quarried themselves, built the first lime kiln in Olmsted County, and provided stone for some of Rochester’s earliest commercial buildings.
Over the years, the families of George and Franz Joseph added buildings to the 160-acre site, some of which were destroyed in the infamous 1883 tornado that devastated the city and led to the founding of the Mayo Clinic.
“It’s important in terms of preserving that heritage and preserving that history for future generations,” Olmsted County Commissioner Dave Senjem said.
Senyem sits on the history center’s board of directors, which recently approved preliminary designs for the group’s entire 54-acre campus.
The proposal calls for extensive renovations to the history center museum and nearby facilities, including the historic early 20th century town hall, agricultural demonstrations and community gardens, and additional outdoor space and play areas connected to local walking trails.
These renovations are intended to make the campus more interactive for school field trips, adult visitors and Mayo patients. History Center officials hope to finalize plans for the new campus next year.
“This is something that’s totally unique to Rochester, a growing city that needs to better understand its agricultural roots and its immigrant roots,” Gannaway said.
