Progress PEOPLE
“ a vision
Crowds of up to 50,000 people filled Albert Lea during the 1940 Colonel Days, named in honor of city founder Col. Albert Miller Lea. This photo was taken on the 200 block of Broadway facing south. The Rivoli theater sign on the right is now the Freeborn County Arts Initiative. Photo courtesy Freeborn county historical MuseuM
He had
Col. Albert Miller Lea’s explorations led him to discover what’s now A.L. Lake city Founder known by nation’s dignitaries
and
t worked to make it happen.”
By Cathy Hay
news@albertleatribune.com
hrough the steam and storms of summer 1835, 164 Dragoons — marines of the prairie — rode horses through the wilderness of what is now southern Minnesota. On July 29 they came upon a lake so vast that they could see no way around it. Among them was Albert Miller Lea, a tall angular man with blue-gray eyes and brown hair, who had recently marked his 27th birthday. “Entangled in these lakes and their connecting streams, we wound about confusedly, having no guide who had any knowledge of the region. As we marched along strung out in a column of twos, a white fox dashed through the column and the lake I was then sketching was noted as ‘Fox Lake,’” Lea wrote. Years later, geographer Joseph Nicollet named it Albert Lea Lake when incorporating Lea’s work into maps of the Upper Mississippi River basin. And the rest is history. Lea was a West Point graduate, U.S. Army officer, explorer, adventurer and the cartographer who first mapped this part of Minnesota and gave the state of Iowa its name. He worked for four presidents, befriended the head of the Confederate Army, was related to a governor, served as a state chief engineer and built railroads through mountains. His book on his explorations encouraged much of the early immigration to regions west of Lake Michigan. Born in Tennessee in 1808, his family used slave labor on their farm and Lea was a slave manager at times. He was also an officer in the Confederate Army during the Civil War. At one time, Albert Leans considered changing the town’s name, partly because of Lea’s loyalty to the Confederacy. In 1874, many citizens signed a petition to abandon the name of Albert Lea and submitted it to the Legislature. Locals were tired of explaining and spelling a name that meant nothing to strangers. Opponents fired back that Lea’s achievements outshone his home state of Tennessee siding with the Confederacy. They emphasized that local businesses were making the name
This photo of Albert Miller Lea was taken in 1879 when he visited Albert Lea. Lea visited this area only twice — the first time when he marched through with the Dragoons in 1835 and again in 1879 when invited to speak to a group of old settlers.
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The Medical Professional Arts building is at 1206 W. Front St. It houses Advanced Family Dental, Orthodontic Health Center and Aurora Dental.
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Children born to Lea, one with his first wife, Ellen, and four with his second wife, Catherine.
Lea mapped the areas explored by the Dragoons in 1835. In his sketch above, “Fox Lake” is “Albert Lea Lake” and the rolling prairie is now the city of Albert Lea, according to “A Hero Nonetheless, Albert Miller Lea, 1808-1891.” “Albert Lea” famous throughout the country. The petition fizzled with the Legislature taking no action. The Freeborn County Standard described the idea, first conceived by a competing newspaper, as “a bombshell hurled into our peaceful midst that nearly blasted Albert Lea off the map.” A few years later, Albert Lea invited the “colonel” to visit his namesake city, a sign that local citizens still respected him despite his Confederate service. As the Freeborn County Standard reported in 1879, Lea was met by the mayor, a
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Highway signs in Minnesota with the name “Albert Lea” as a guide to Interstate 35.
See LEA, Page 3
1,100
Miles Dragoons traveled from Ft. Des Moines to Winona, west to Albert Lea and back to Iowa.
ide? What’s ins
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