Thorpe Township is in Hubbard County, Minnesota. The population is 37 according to the 2000 census. It is 36.0 square miles, of which 34.8 square miles is land and 1.2 square miles is water. Big Mantrap Lake, Mud Lake and Giles Lake are the largest bodies of water in the township. The Paul Bunyan State Forest covers much of the township and includes Thorpe Lookout, 1844 feet, the tallest point in Hubbard County.
HISTORY OF THORPE TOWNSHIP
The first Township meeting was held at 9:00 a.m. on Thursday, August 30, 1903, at the schoolhouse in School District #51. The school had been established in July 1902. At that time, this area was a part of Mantrap Township. In July 1903, on petition of D. Cornwall, et al, to the Hubbard County Board, Township 142 – Range 33 was made into a Congressional Township and was named Thorpe Township.
Joseph Thorpe with his father and two sisters were homesteaders here in 1896. He built a four-room log cabin for his family on what is now County Road #91, or the Gulch Road, and later a two-story home nearby. They rented the upstairs to the schoolteachers as the first schoolhouse was built across the road from them.
Also, in July 1903, Ole Hoglund presented a petition to the Hubbard County Board to organize a school in the eastern half of the township, and in October 1903, School District #61 was organized. In 1911, School District #78 was organized in the northern third of the township but was dissolved in 1917. At one time in the 1920’s, there were 42 children enrolled in the first schoolhouse, across from the Thorpe place.
In 1931, School District #61 became unorganized and in 1950 School District #51 became unorganized. The old school house was turned over to the township in 1953 for a town hall. The original township hall, located on the NW corner of the intersection of County Road #91 and Steamboat Forest Road had burned earlier and the barn was sold and moved in 1945. The old school house was used as a township hall until 1974 when it was sold, and has subsequently burned.
The schoolhouse in School District #78 was sold and torn down, the lumber being used elsewhere in the township in building parts of homes and barns. The school bell is now a part of the reconstructed schoolhouse in Walker.
Early township clerks were C.J.Jenks, L.O.Spurlin, W.D.Giles and M.J.Porter. The first resort was a log cabin built in 1907 by Fred Chandler and Louis Moser on what is now known as Fremont’s Point. Bert and Hattie Sanders, for whom Sanders Road is named, built Birch Highlands north of Fremont’s Point in the 1930’s and Hattie Sanders was a township clerk from 1942 until her death in 1965.
Paul Bunyan State Forest was created in November 1934 with an original purchase of 32,000 acres. In 1980 the value of state land in Thorpe Township was over two and one-half million dollars. Logging and farming were probably of equal importance in the early 1900’s with logging coming to a halt about 1912. At one time, the railroad spur ran along the north end of Big Mantrap Lake where a hoist was constructed about 1900 on pilings that still remain in what is now called Hoist Bay. There was a C.C.C.Camp on the Gulch Road (County Road 91), about a mile north of the site of the original Township Hall.
As logging slowed down, the railroad spurs became roads, and more areas became small farms. Today, Thorpe Township has seven families who are year around residents and many seasonal homes.
Frances H. Dixon – May 8, 1980
Clerk, Thorpe Township
– Written for Park Rapids Enterprise Centennial issue – Taken in part from Hubbard County Commissioner’s Minutes, Hubbard County Courthouse.