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• • • 3.0 Land & Water Resource Assessment 3.1. History Dakota Indians lived in what would later be called Centerville Township in the 1600s and 1700s. At that time, the area was covered with dense woodlands and many square miles of marshes, lakes and waterways. The natural habitat provided the Dakota with an abundant food supply, including wild rice and a wide variety of game and fish. They traveled the waterways by canoe, reaching the St. Croix River to the east and the Mississippi River to the west. The Dakotas abandoned their settlement in the late 1700s, but returned annually to harvest wild rice. The abundance of wildlife attracted many trappers and hunters in the early 1800s. The western part of the Township was known as the "German" settlement and was first settled in 1850, by F.W. Travis and was followed five years later by Henry Wenzel. The eastern part of the Township was known as the "French" settlement and its first settlers in 1852 were: Francis Lamott, F.X. LaVallee, Peter Cardinal, Charles Peltier, Joseph Houle, A. Gervais, Oliver Dupre, Joseph Forcier, Paul and Oliver Peltier, Stephen Ward and L. Burkard. The downtown area of what came to be the City of Centerville was originally established as a "French" settlement in the middle part of the 1800s. In 1854, Charles Peltier built a sawmill on Clearwater Creek near the village. In the same year, settlers Peltier, LaValle and LaMotte laid out and platted the Town. They chose the name Centerville because of its central location from St. Paul, Stillwater, and Anoka. The City was officially established on August 11, 1857, when Minnesota was still a territory. In the 1950s, neighboring villages started annexing land away from Centerville Township. By 1955, to protect the boundaries and allow for the financing of public improvements, a committee of the Centerville Town Board began proceedings for incorporation from all of Centerville Township, except the Cities of Centerville and Circle Pines. They took the historic name Lino and because of the ten lakes within the area added Lakes and came up with the name Lino Lakes. On May 11, 1955, the new Village of Lino Lakes was incorporated. At incorporation, the new Village was comprised of 21,000 acres of land and 1,800 citizens. In 1972, the State Legislature passed a law changing all Minnesota villages to cities, hence the current status of the City of Lino Lakes. Today, the City has a population of over 20,216 people and is rapidly developing. The current City location is shown in Figure 1. City of Lino Lakes SWMP February 8, 2013 Draft 7