Olmsted County history center raising $3M to save 1800s farmstead

ROCHESTER - Two years before Minnesota became a state, a pair of German brothers made their home close to the budding community of Rochester.

The farmstead owned by George Stoppel and his brother, Franz Joseph, grew as the city did. The property has fallen into disrepair in recent years, but the History Center of Olmsted County plans to change that.

Center officials are raising$3 million to renovate and expand the Stoppel Farmstead, using it as an example of what life was like in the 1800s. They expect it to be the first step toward a larger campus for the center.

“We’re at a turning point with the Stoppel Farmstead,” said Wayne Gannaway, executive director of the History Center. “It’s in poor condition, and we needed to restore and put it to use or do something else with it.”

The History Center has already secured a little over $800,000 from the Jeffris Family Foundation, which focuses on preserving historic sites in the Midwest. Local officials are also counting a $500,000 state Legacy fund grant that went toward fixing the farmstead’s smokehouse.

They hope to raise the rest of the $3 million over the next two years, which will go toward fixing the farmstead barn, the Stoppel house, and the dug-out caves the Stoppel family lived in during their first winter on the property. If all goes well, restoration work on the farmstead will wrap up in 2028.

“Frankly, the buildings on the farmstead don’t have a lot longer,” Gannaway said. “They won’t last much longer than past that period so we need to get to them. The need is urgent.”

The family replaced those log cabins with stone houses using limestone they quarried, building the first lime kiln in Olmsted County and providing stones for some of Rochester’s earliest commercial buildings.

George and Franz Joseph’s families added more buildings to their 160-acre estate over the years — some of which were destroyed during the notorious 1883 tornado that devastated the city, leading to the creation of the Mayo Clinic.

“It’s important from the standpoint of preserving that legacy, preserving that history for future generations,” Olmsted County Commissioner Dave Senjem said.

Senjem serves on the History Center’s board, which recently approved preliminary designs for the group’s entire 54-acre campus.

The proposal calls for major upgrades to the History Center museum and nearby facilities, including a historic town hall from the turn of the 20th century, crop demonstrations and community gardens, and more outdoor spaces and playgrounds tied to local trails.