Dakota County: Battling railroads, saving a beloved monument and lessons from our past

By Joe Atkins | Dakota County Commissioner | October 2026

History has a funny way of reminding us that many of the challenges we face today are not entirely new. The names change. The technology changes. The issues change. But questions about accountability, trust, public safety and standing up for your community have been around for generations.

One of my favorite examples happened in Inver Grove Heights in 1977. That summer, sparks from Chicago & North Western Railroad trains repeatedly started grass fires along Concord. The city responded to the fires and sent the railroad the bill, just as it had done in years before.

Nothing happened. The bill went unpaid. Letters went unanswered. Phone calls were ignored. When the city attorney and mayor called to follow up, the railroad’s attorney actually told the mayor to “go [screw] yourself.”

The mayor waited a few days. Then, when a fully loaded freight train stopped in town, he directed the fire chief to park fire trucks across the tracks on both sides of the train. The train was going nowhere. The furious railroad attorney called the city attorney demanding an explanation. The city attorney told him he would have to take it up with the mayor. When he did, the mayor gave him the same colorful advice he had received a week earlier. The bill was paid in full two days later.

I have always loved that story for personal reasons. The mayor was my dad, Gene Atkins, who grew up in West St. Paul, graduated from Sibley High School, now Two Rivers, and later taught social studies at Grass Junior High. The fire chief was my father-in-law, Scott McLean. But I also love what the story says about local government. Sometimes representing people means refusing to be ignored or bullied, even when the other side is bigger, richer or more powerful.

South St. Paul has its own remarkable railroad story. In October 1912, Engine No. 10 plunged through an open swing bridge into the Mississippi River in what became known as the “Wreck of the Ten Spot.” Engineer Charles Cramer was killed, and railroad officials publicly placed the blame on him.

Years later, however, court documents and Dakota County records painted a much more complicated picture. They showed conflicting bridge signals and allegations that the train’s air-brake system had not been properly connected. Cramer’s widow, Willa, sued the railroad and reached a sizeable settlement with the railroad, roughly two and a half years of her husband’s wages. Her attorney was Pierce Butler, a Dakota County native who would later become the first Minnesotan to serve on the United States Supreme Court.

The records told a story very different from the one first presented to the public. That is one reason I have always appreciated local history. Old records are stubborn things. They have a way of cutting through the passage of time. They remind us that facts matter, that first explanations are not always the full explanation, and that persistence can eventually bring the truth to light.
West St. Paul offers another lesson, this one on a much smaller scale. At the intersection of Smith, Dodd and Bernard sits Albert Park, a tiny 1,790-square-foot triangle of land created in 1931 to honor 15-year-old Boy Scout Albert LeFevre, who drowned in the Mississippi River.

In 1953, a black granite marker was installed at the park in Albert’s memory. During a redesign in 1967, masonry contractor Bob Licha was instructed to remove the 300-pound marker and get rid of it. He could not bring himself to do that, so he saved it and kept it safely beside his garage for the next 46 years.

Then, at age 87, Bob contacted the city and made sure the monument was returned to the place where it belonged. There had been no ceremony when he saved the marker, no headlines and no expectation that anyone would ever know what he had done. He simply believed a young boy’s memory was worth preserving.

Today, as improvements continue in the Smith and Dodd area, Albert Park is being thoughtfully redesigned and expanded, and a permanent memorial to fallen Mendota Heights Police Officer Scott Patrick is being created nearby. The project is another reminder that preserving history does not mean freezing a community in time. We can honor what came before while continuing to build for the future.

Whether looking back 50 years or all the way to 1849, when the newly created “Dakotah County” stretched roughly 400 miles west to the Missouri River, the character of a community has never been defined simply by boundaries on a map. It is built by people.

It is built by those who stand up when something is wrong, those who keep asking questions when an explanation does not make sense, and those who quietly protect something important simply because they believe it should not be forgotten.

Today we face our own challenges involving county budgets, roads, elections, public safety and the many other responsibilities of local government. The issues may be different from those faced in 1912, 1931 or 1977, but the qualities needed to address them are not: persistence, accountability, integrity, a willingness to listen and, every once in a while, perhaps a little creativity.
Our communities have inherited a remarkable history, and what we do today will become part of it. Good local government depends on listening, asking questions, staying connected to the people we serve and remembering that the decisions we make today can echo for generations.

Commissioner Joe Atkins represents South St. Paul, West St. Paul and Inver Grove Heights on the Dakota County Board. He welcomes comments at Joe.Atkins@co.dakota.mn.us or 651-438-4430.

View past articles from this year!
It’s time for the next Minnesota Miracle (January)
What a new Minnesota Miracle could look like (February)
By the way, I love your pizza (March)
Updating state computers can save taxpayers millions (April)
Sometimes the best stories are the quiet ones (May)
The night I tried to ask Ellen DeGeneres out (June)
A summer potluck of county updates (July)
Four national honors. One remarkable county. (August)
A difficult 2027 budget and some hard choices ahead (September)

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