History of Landfall Village, MN
Landfall occupies the southwestern corner of Oakdale Township, one of the first townships organized in Washington County in November 1858 when Minnesota became a state. At one time, the area was mostly farm land. In 1901 John Schiltgen farmed the land Landfall sits on. Surrounding it to the north and east was the 300 acre Oak Woods Stock Farm owned by Frank Morris. On the south was the Hudson Road leading from St. Paul to the St. Croix River bridge at Hudson, Wisconsin.
James and Mitzi Olson used to own all of the land in Landfall. They moved here in 1953 into a cottage that was hardly better than a log cabin. The cottage had been here a long time and was rumored to have harbored John Dillinger, a notorious gangster who made St. Paul his home in the 1930’s. Mitzi Olson, in an interview in 1998 said “We heard rumors that Dillinger used to live there. A fellow who used to deliver propane gas said he used to deliver packages for Dillinger as a boy.”
The Olsons had lived in a mobile home during World War ll and knew that there was a shortage of affordable housing, so they developed their site into a mobile home park. As it was on the early highway between St. Paul and Hudson, Landfall developed several businesses, including a truck stop, restaurant and nursery, most of which left when Interstate 94 was put through and access became limited.
In the early 1990’s, the mobile home park was in danger of being bought up by a developer who wished to build a shopping mall or luxury housing on the site. The Washington County Housing and Redevelopment Authority came to the rescue by purchasing the city and preserving its low-income housing. In 1997 the County Authority sold Landfall to the Landfall Housing and Redevelopment Authority.
To see the page on Landfall's History provided by the Washington County Historical Society, click here.
To see information about Landfall provided from Wikipedia.org, click here.
