This week’s Back Roads is the work of The Land Correspondent Richard Siemers
THE LAND, FEBRUARY 24, 2012
Rural roots
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Original site of Breck Academy, Wilder, Minn. lasted September through June cost $110 (paid in advance). That amount included steam-heated The school, founded by a Rev. Dunn and named dorm rooms, board, laundry and tuition. It was for pioneer missionary Rev. James Lloyd Breck, Wilder, a burg along Minnesota Highway 60 south opened in 1886 on the west edge of Wilder. The only known as Breck College in those days, and served of Windom. evidence of its former existence is a large sign stat- an older student body. Pulling into this small southwest Minnesota com- ing the fact and picturing the buildings that once Breck remained in Wilder for 30 years, moving to munity of houses (pop. 60), it takes some imagina- made up the campus. its first Twin Cities location in 1916. The population to picture it as the always small but thriving tion of Wilder was already in decline and the The central administration building held the town it once was, with four passenger trains stopschool’s departure surely didn’t help. While the classrooms, dining hall and gymnasium. There was ping daily. school is long-gone, the billboard commemorating it a girls’ dormitory, a boys’ dormitory and a chapel. Wilder’s population never reached 200, which along County Highway 13 assures it has not been This being a farm college, there was a farm with may have been part of the attraction to those who forgotten. the usual buildings. The farm provided practical founded the school as an Episcopal farm college in hands-on education and produced food for the The history in this story was drawn from the two 1885. The school was advertised as a place where school. volumes of Jackson County History and supplestudents wouldn’t need much money — there was mented from the website of Breck Academy. ❖ Education was a bargain. The school year that no place to spend it — and they wouldn’t be dis-
“Where Farm and Family Meet”
reck Academy has been part of the Twin Cities B scene for so long that one would not guess it has rural roots. Yet its birthplace was the town of
tracted from their studies.
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