Pump house near

Harkin Store burns

Wind blows fire away from

historic site

By KEVIN SWEENEY

Journal Editor

WEST NEWTON -- A fire that apparently started in a unused well pumphouse came frighteningly close to the historic Harkin Store Wednesday afternoon.

The fire started in the house attached to the historic site, a private residence occupied by John and Brenda Aufderheide.

Brenda Aufderheide came home from her job with UPS in Mankato at about 2:50 p.m. Wednesday to find the pumphouse, a small shed a few feet from her house, engulfed in flames. Her husband, who is working the midnight shift at Kraft, was asleep in the house.

Stiff winds blowing away from the house were driving flames away from the house and the Harkin Store, and up the hill.into a wooded area.

Brenda Aufderheide called 911, and Nicollet County dispatchers called the Gibbon Fire Department, which responded to the fire. Brenda grabbed a garden hose to spray the pump house while her husband went into the woods to fight flames there. A neighbor, Agnes Gleisner, also helped with the hose until the Gibbon firefighters arrived.

Brenda said she called the 911 dispatcher again after a long time passed with no response. Told that the Gibbon Fire Department had been dispatched, she told the dispatcher, "Wrong choice." New Ulm is much closer to the Harkin Store, and Aufderheide said her home is in the New Ulm Rural Fire Association district.

Opal Dewanz, director of the Harkin Store, was also at the scene. "This is too close for comfort," she said. "If the wind were blowing in the other direction, the store would be gone.

"You can rebuild a new home, but you could never replace the history here."

The Aufderheides' home is built around a log cabin that was built in 1868, and the Harkin Store was built in 1870. The store was the commercial center for the town along the river. Its fortunes faded when the railroad was built on the other side of the river in 1873. The store continued to operate, but was closed in 1901. It was reopened as a museum in 1938, with much of its original stock still on the shelves. It operates today as a site that offers visitors a glimpse of life in the 1870s.

The cause of the fire was not immediately known. Brenda Aufderheide said the shed that burned is used for storage. She wasn't sure if the pump was still connected to the electrical system in the house.