West Newton Day turns 25

By KURT NESBITT

Journal Staff Writer

WEST NEWTON -- Eilene Russell Bussler remembers hearing the stories about the days when her great-great grandfather, Alexander Harkin, ran the hub of the town of West Newton.

Bussler grew up a few hundred feet down what is now Nicollet County Road 21 in a farm house that stands to this day.

She remembers the stories that Janet Massopust, her grandmother, used to tell about the kinds of things Harkin used to sell or the tales of the people that used to come in and play checkers besides the store's wood-burning stove.

She said the store has changed since her childhood, since parts of the 1870s general store were fixed up.

"But it was dark like it is now," she said, standing on the front porch besides the main door. "I remember the same smell as a kid. The checkerboard was there. The way (Janet Massopust) used to tell stories I could just picture it."

Bussler never got to meet her great-great grandfather, who died in 1907. Her grandfather, Alexander Russell, died the year before she was born. But she comes back to the store at least once every year and brings her grandchildren with her so that they can get a sense of their family history.

In the 25 years that she's been manager of the Harkin Store, Opal Dewanz has also seen a certain amount of change.

West Newton Day, for example, was an idea Dewanz had in response to lagging attendance in the late 1970s. In the years since then, she's seen huge crowds and thin crowds and the celebration has changed a little bit each year even though the same goal still applies.

"We try to do things that they would've done in the 1860s," said Dewanz, standing in the main door in a dusty pink period costume.

Over the past 25 years, that's included bagpipers, Scottish Highland dancing troupes, crocheting, wood carving, sauerkraut making, wagon rides, Appalachian dulcimers, concertinas, weaving and spinning wool.

Joy Gerard of Courtland has received calls from Dewanz asking if she's available to demonstrate her craft before. Gerard was at the Harkin Store demonstrating a late-19th century technique for spinning yarn.

"It's a beautiful day out here," she said.

Like its neighbors the Lower Sioux Agency and Fort Ridgely, the Harkin Store has also had some hard times. The site was operated by the Minnesota Historical Society until Brown County took over management in 1986. The Nicollet County Historical Society has managed the store for the last five years. Dewanz said the closing of the Lower Sioux and the scaled-back hours of Fort Ridgely have had an impact on visits to the Harkin Store in the sense that the other sites gave people a reason to travel up the road in order to see all three places.

Dewanz said she plans to retire at the end of the season to travel and spend time with her husband and her family. She started working at the Harkin Store when it first opened to the public in 1977. She said the Nicollet County Historical Society hasn't finalized a replacement site manager yet.

"It's been fun," she said. "I've had a wonderful time doing these things, but let someone else do it. Maybe with new ideas."

The Harkin Store was opened by Alexander Harkin, a Scottish immigrant, in the late 1860s. It was an important place in the lives of the early settlers in the area as it was a source of food, clothing, impromptu discussions and mail for the town of West Newton. But when the railroads bypassed the town in the early 1870s, river commerce started to fade. A grasshopper plague left many farmers in debt and the Harkin Store was forced to close in 1907 with a lot of its unsold inventory still on the shelves.

Harkin's granddaughter, Janet Massopust, re-opened the store as a private museum in 1938 and sold the store to the Minnesota Historical Society in 1973.