Story originally printed in the Winona Daily News or online at www.winonadailynews.com

Published - Monday, August 04, 2008

Close-knit community celebrates 150 years

Danica Stampka, 1, checks out the goats at the sesquicentennial celebration in Ridgeway, Minn. on Sunday. (Photo by Paul Solberg/Winona Daily News)

By Käri Knutson / Winona Daily News

RIDGEWAY, Minn. — Pleasant Hill Township.

Just the name sounds nice. And if you ask the people who live in the small community of about 500, they’ll tell you. It’s a pretty nice place to live.

“It’s simple around here,” said 29-year-old lifelong resident Sarah Schams. “I love it.”

The folks of the township, which includes Ridgeway, celebrated its sesquicentennial Sunday with a big get-together. Everyone seemed to know everyone else. There was a cemetery walk with locals depicting past Pleasant Hill residents, a chickencue, threshing bee, kids’ tractor pull and antique tractor show.

Bob Hass, 78, has lived in Ridgeway his entire life except for a few years during the Depression. He remembers the muddy roads Ridgeway used to have and the tiny schoolhouse he and about 30 other classmates attended.

“A lot has changed,” Hass said.

But not everything.

“Everyone is still friendly,” Hass said. “When there’s something to do, people always come to help.”

Hass and his father helped start the Ridgeway Fire Department in about 1949. They decided the township needed one after lightning struck a pile of hay outside a farm. Hass and others went door to door asking for donations. Hass didn’t like asking people for the money, but in the end they had enough for a portable pump they stored in the creamery so it wouldn’t freeze.

“If people gave $20, it was a lot,” Hass said. “It helped us save a couple houses.”

Hass, who is a township board member, continues to help the Ridgeway community. When the Ridgeway Community School recently expanded, he built bookshelves for its new library and helped with landscaping.

“Without folks like him, we wouldn’t have been able to do this,” said school coordinator Jodi Dansingburg.

Dansingburg has lived in Ridgeway for about 12 years.

“I enjoy the country life and peacefulness that it brings,” Dansingburg said. “It’s a friendly and giving community. I think that’s why folks still live here.”

Many Ridgeway residents work in Winona, Rochester or Houston in Minnesota or La Crosse, Wis.

For some, Ridgeway would be too small. But for those who live there and love it, it’s just right.

“Some people will never understand,” Schams said.

Contact Käri Knutson at kknutson@winonadailynews.com or (507) 453-3523.