Erik Ahlberg’s painting before restoration. See the transformation at the Hjemkomst Center.

Clay County Histories

Markus Krueger | Program Director HCSCC

You know that old log cabin in W. H. Davy Park in Moorhead? It is made from the logs of one of the oldest buildings in this part of the Red River Valley – the Burbank Station stagecoach stop, built about 1862. About 10 years later, in the fall of 1871, the Northern Pacific Railway built train tracks right by it and called the place Moorhead. About 10 years later, sometime in the 1880s, a Moorheadian named Charles Whitcomb bought the old stagecoach station, moved it to 225 10th Street North, covered it in brick, and called it home. About 50 years later, in the fall of 1931, the owner of that home tore it down.
Local history buffs convinced the homeowner to donate those historical logs to…something they’ll figure out later. Later came soon. In 1932, the Moorhead Garden Club got permission to use those old logs for their clubhouse, which they envisioned as a “pioneer shrine.” They built this new log cabin on 4th Street South overlooking Woodlawn Park. The Moorhead Garden Club used it as their clubhouse until they disbanded in 1997.
Speaking of 1997, Woodlawn Park went underwater that year in one of our big Red River floods. That and other floods badly damaged the foundation of this log cabin. To save it, the city of Moorhead moved the cabin to Davy Park, pretty close to where the logs used to live when they were called Burbank Station.
In 2010, my historical society colleagues Mark Peihl and Lisa Vedaa and me were invited to the newly-moved old cabin that isn’t Burbank Station but is made of it (what do we call this thing nowadays?) to see if we were interested in preserving any of the old stuff inside. I think it was Mark who asked if we could climb down into the crawlspace underneath. There we found a big old painting that was in really rough shape. It was painted by Erik Ahlberg. We wanted it!
Erik Ahlberg will surely get his own column here someday because he is one of my favorite artists. He moved to Moorhead from Sweden in 1914 at the age of 21. He got a job as a “decorator,” painting houses at first, then graduating to things like painting signs in the era when all signs were hand painted. He opened his own shop with Oscar Johnson and specialized in figurative paintings like murals on business walls. In 1934, Erik Ahlberg painted a scene of a white pioneer family meeting a Native American man along a prairie road, and he gave it to the Moorhead Garden Club for their clubhouse. Does anyone recall seeing this painting hanging there?
When I first saw this painting, it was moldy, grimy, and some critters had munched several holes in it. Now, 14 years later, thanks to a grant from the Minnesota Historical Society and several very nice and generous lovers of local art and Swedish heritage, we were able to employ the impressive experts at Midwest Art Conservation Center in Minneapolis to painstakingly restore this painting. The painting will be on display at the Hjemkomst Center for the next several months. Come see the transformation, learn how paintings are restored, and meet a very quirky and lovable Moorhead artist named Erik Ahlberg.