A history of Cold Spring,
then and now
Postcards, papers and photographs of Cold Spring from public archives, woven together by decade. Neighbors fill in the gaps.
The story
from WikipediaRead it all ↗Originally home to the Ojibwe, Winnebago, and Dakota people, Cold Spring was platted in 1856, and named for the many springs near the original town site. A post office has been in operation at Cold Spring since 1857.
German-speaking Catholics settled in the area, lured by the Slovenian missionary priest Francis Xavier Pierz, who had submitted letters and advertisements to the major German-language newspapers across the U.S., such as Der Wahrheitsfreund (The Friend of Truth), and in Europe, urging "good, pious" German Catholics to come to the Sauk River Valley, which he called a "land flowing with milk and honey" and safe from disease and anti-Catholic oppression.
Text from Wikipedia, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.
Timeline
built from the dates on the items belowFinish Cold Spring’s story
Most archives stop around 1920. The photos from after that are in family albums, not libraries.
1 of 10 decades since 1900 have photos 🔁Retake an old viewThe dam, 1908: stand where they stood+15 📦Share a family photoSign in to add one+10Famous people from Cold Spring
See all 8 →
Cold Spring, decade by decade
1990s
3 historic places in Cold Spring
3 places in Cold Spring are on the National Register of Historic Places, the country’s official list of buildings and places worth saving.
Where they are
When they were listed
Then & now
No then-and-now pairs yet. Take a photo from the same spot as The dam (1908) and it appears here side by side.
🔁 Retake this view · +15Stories next door
nearby towns’ historyFrom Wikimedia Commons (6), the Library of Congress (9) and the National Register (3). Images are copied here with their credits and licenses, shown on each photo’s page. Refreshed monthly.