MANKATO — Other than by hooves, the land east of Tourtellotte Park has rarely been disturbed, something that was apparent to the dignitaries trying to push their ceremonial gold shovels through the thick sod Tuesday morning.
“It’s been a while since that dirt was moved,” commented James Arentson, an architect with Southwest Minnesota Housing Partnership.
A while, as in possibly never.
Most of the six-acre parcel where SWMHP is about to construct eight new homes served for more than a century as a pasture for grazing cattle, part of the land purchased in 1910 by the School Sisters of Notre Dame to create a regional base and a girls boarding school.
There was one house on the parcel, used for student housing, but that was closer to the steps leading up the hill to the main campus of Our Lady of Good Counsel, said Sister Mary Kay Ash.
Some clearing of trees may have occurred before the animals were first set out to graze, but historic photos suggest the hillside was not heavily wooded. So the area might have been a remnant of original prairie.
Even after the self-sufficient sisters stopped milking cows and butchering their own beef, the pastureland continued to be home to cattle — leased to a farmer who hauled cows to the site to feed during the warm-weather months. Ash shared off-campus housing with a sister who was assigned to be on-call for any instance — day or night — where the bovine inhabitants caused trouble. And it wasn’t uncommon for the calls to come because of the cows’ persistence in seeking out weak spots in the fencing, particularly along the less-sturdy barbed wire fences on the hillside.
“They’d call and she had to come in because the cattle were out,” Ash said.
It’s been about 10 years since the cattle were last invited to the meadow, mainly because it was becoming too troublesome to keep the barbed wire in good repair. By next year, the meadow will exist only in memories and histories.
But for the sisters, the general feeling is one of celebration, even if it’s a bit bittersweet to see a bucolic space in the heart of Mankato being partially paved over.
“To me it’s good news, especially because it’s going to provide housing,” said Sister Dorothy Zellers.
While the spacious site would have been prime real estate for two or three high-end homes, the School Sisters sold it instead to the Housing Partnership for the construction of modest homes — eventually as many as 11 — that will be marketed at affordable prices through a land trust model to income-eligible buyers.
“It’s a good thing,” Sister LuAnn Jacobs said of the redevelopment of the meadow. “Because we’re sharing it with someone else. And they’re doing good things with it.”