A Trip To Northfield

Via Billy

 From left to right: Frank James, Jesse James, Cole Younger, and Bob Younger.

I recently returned from a trip to Minnesota, not the warmest place in the country this time of year. I visited with folks I’ve not seen in several years and it was a good reunion, even if the temperature hardly ever got up to freezing.

While there I got to go over to the town of Northfield, which should be a familiar name to many who study history, and particularly to those who have studied some of the personalities on both sides during the War of Northern Aggression. Northfield is a nice little town of about 20,000 and much of the architecture in the center of town is still of the type you saw in many parts of the country, particularly the Midwest, South and West during the late 19th century. Much of it looks very little changed since that time. Over the years we’ve been in many towns across the country that have sought to retain their original flavor and we enjoy them very much. Modern I am not. I like the older, traditional things, which, I suppose, makes me somewhat of an anachronism to the modern or post-modern (or whatever they call them nowadays) crowd.

Anyway, one of Northfield’s claims to fame is that Jesse James and his gang tried to rob the First National Bank there on September 7, 1876. That might seem a long way out of traditional Jesse James territory, but there were reasons for this particular expedition.

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