Minnesota Prairie Roots

Writing and photography by Audrey Kletscher Helbling

Noteworthy finds while on the road in southern Minnesota June 2, 2026

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Driving into Redwood County near Morgan. (Minnesota Prairie Roots copyrighted file photo May 2026)

WHILE ON THE ROAD from Faribault to my hometown of Vesta and back recently, I noticed interesting roadside details. These may not necessarily catch the attention of other motorists. But they caught my eye.

Unleaded gas was priced substantially lower than other places at Morgan Convenience on May 26. (Minnesota Prairie Roots copyrighted photo May 2026)

“BARGAIN” GAS

Let’s start with the price of unleaded gas at Morgan Convenience, Food & Fuel. It was priced at $4.18 (rounded up a tenth) on May 26. Elsewhere along the route, the cost was $4.49 (rounded up a tenth). I don’t understand how the gas price in Morgan, a small rural Minnesota town of some 900, can be so much lower than in neighboring New Ulm, population around 14,000, for example. Or in Faribault with about 25,000 residents. This makes no sense to me and is not the first time gas prices in more rural outstate Minnesota have been priced considerably lower.

Signage at a restaurant and bar in Morgan. (Minnesota Prairie Roots copyrighted photo May 2026)

MORE THAN JUST BURGERS

Also in Morgan, I spotted this sign: THE SPOTT. And, yes, the period is part of the abbreviated name. Clever. Upon returning home, I researched this business, full name The Spotted Bear Ale House. It’s a restaurant and full service bar.

The Facebook page features lots of food I’d enjoy: loaded pulled pork baked potato; pulled beef Gouda sliders with Parmesan fries; caramel, strawberry lemon, raspberry and/or banana rolls with peanut butter frosting; General Tso chicken and rice with crab salad; and more. Yum. The offerings impress me as vastly different from your typical small town burgers and other bar food. As a side note, this business is for sale.

An old threshing machine is the backdrop for Gilfillan Estate signage. (Minnesota Prairie Roots copyrighted photo May 2026)

AN ESTATE IN THE MIDDLE OF FARM FIELDS

Just down the highway, another sign grabbed my attention. That was signage on an old threshing machine marking the Redwood County Historical Society’s Gilfillan Estate. It’s not the sign so much as this property west of Morgan along Minnesota State Highway 67 that is noteworthy. Here you’ll find both the estate and the site of Minnesota Farmfest.

The estate, with its long, tree-lined driveway leading to a stately house, has been here for as long as I can remember. The original owner, Charles Duncan Gilfillan (1831-1902), bought 10,000 acres of Redwood County farmland. He built a house, offices, a grain elevator, stockyard and tenet homes here and raised purebred livestock exported to Great Britain. Eventually his son, Charles Oswin Gilfillan, took over the estate. The younger Gilfillan was an active philanthropist in Redwood County. I must make an effort sometime to tour the estate and learn more about the Gilfillans and their generosity.

An A.C.O. silo still stands between New Ulm and Courtland. (Minnesota Prairie Roots copyrighted photo May 2026)

A NOD TO FARMING OF YESTERYEAR

More history is written onto a silo that hugs U.S. Highway 14 east of New Ulm. The A.C.O. on the brick silo stands for AC Ochs of the AC Ochs Brick and Tile Company in Springfield, several towns down the road to the west 30 miles distant. These silos, made from curved bricks, were built across the Midwest between 1910-1945. I love their historic, signature look and their unique construction. They are landmarks of a bygone era of diversified small family farms.

The Colonial Inn, with a 73-year history in New Ulm. (Minnesota Prairie Roots copyrighted photo May 2026)

AN OLD SCHOOL MOTEL

In New Ulm, the Colonial Inn along North Broadway/Highway 14 appears old school motel. And it is. Built in 1953, rooms in the U-shaped building open to the paved parking lot. While I’ve only seen the motel from the exterior and a few photos on the no-frills website, this motel seems exactly as I would expect. Basic. Simple. And a throwback to yesteryear with the exception of WiFi.

A billboard with an unusual question. (Minnesota Prairie Roots copyrighted photo May 2026)

FIRE & BRIMSTONE

Finally, in the Smiths Mill area along Highway 14 east of Mankato, a thought-provoking sign asks whether you will go to heaven or to hell when you die. I have no idea who paid for this billboard with the John 3:36 notation at the bottom. But it’s certainly an oddity in highway signage. Fire or no fire?

You never know what you’ll discover while on the road.

© Copyright 2026 Audrey Kletscher Helbling

 

A whole lot of Irish in St. Patrick March 13, 2024

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Appropriate signage for a tavern in St. Patrick, Minnesota. (Minnesota Prairie Roots copyrighted file photo June 2015)

BEER, BASEBALL AND BLESSINGS. Those words define St. Patrick, an unincorporated place of bar, baseball field and Catholic church northeast of New Prague. With the approach of St. Patrick’s Day, now seems a fitting time to revisit this southern Minnesota burg, which I photographed in the summer of 2015.

St. Patrick Church of Cedar Lake Township. (Minnesota Prairie Roots copyrighted file photo June 2015)

I never stepped inside St. Patrick’s Tavern or onto Bonin Field, home of the St. Patrick Irish, on that summer day. Rather, I walked around St. Patrick Church of Cedar Lake Township and its adjoining cemetery. Church doors were locked.

St. Patrick’s church and cemetery.
St. Patrick’s Bonin Field, named after Father Leon Bonin, who brought baseball back to St. Patrick in the 1950s. (Minnesota Prairie Roots copyrighted file photo June 2015)
Across the road from the St. Patrick cemetery sits St. Patrick’s Tavern. (Minnesota Prairie Roots copyrighted file photo June 2015)

The stately church sits atop a hill, the ball field at the base on one side, the tavern on the other. Pray. Play. And then congregate over a beer and a burger basket at the tavern. Or, on St. Patrick’s Day weekend, corned beef and cabbage downed with on-tap green beer, while supplies last.

Born in Ireland, buried in the St. Patrick Church of Cedar Lake Township Cemetery in southern Minnesota. (Minnesota Prairie Roots copyrighted file photo June 2015)
Bonin Field, home of the St. Patrick Irish. (Minnesota Prairie Roots copyrighted file photo June 2015)
The bar and restaurant in St. Patrick. (Minnesota Prairie Roots copyrighted file photo June 2015)

Even with the minimal time I spent in St. Patrick, I experienced its Irish heritage. It’s reflected on tombstones, in the very names of the church, ball field and bar. It’s reflected on signage. But mostly, it’s this feeling of sacredness, as if the patron saint of the Irish dwells here. In the pews. On the bleachers. Even, I expect, inside the bar. St. Patrick was, after all, a missionary.

St. Patrick’s steeple rises in the background, behind this cemetery angel. (Minnesota Prairie Roots copyrighted file photo June 2015)

And then there’s the sacred art. Crucifixes. An angel statue. Tombstones that hold names and history.

The Holy Family tucks into a corner of the grotto. (Minnesota Prairie Roots copyrighted file photo June 2015)
The beautiful face of Mary at the St. Patrick’s grotto. (Minnesota Prairie Roots copyrighted file photo June 2015)
The loving hand of Mary rests upon her son, Jesus, in this sculpture at St. Patrick’s. (Minnesota Prairie Roots copyrighted file photo June 2015)

Aside the church, a grotto welcomes with the most hauntingly beautiful sculptures.

St. Patrick may seem like nothing more than a country church, just another rural bar and a baseball diamond to passing motorists. But it’s much more, worth the stop for a close-up look at a place rooted in Irish heritage.

More signage on St. Patrick’s Tavern. (Minnesota Prairie Roots copyrighted file photo June 2015)

Next road trip back here, I’ll pop into the tavern, order a brew and maybe a burger, and raise my mug to the Irish who settled here, claimed this land as theirs. Here in St. Patrick, place of beer, baseball and blessings.

© Copyright 2024 Audrey Kletscher Helbling

 

On the way to Mac’s Park Place, rural Mazeppa August 8, 2022

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A quick snapshot I took of Mac’s Park Place roadside sign through the passenger side window of our van. (Minnesota Prairie Roots copyrighted photo May 2022)

BACK COUNTRY ROADS often lead to interesting discoveries. Places that reveal America at its grassroots basic. Such is the road leading to Mac’s Park Place. And such is Mac’s.

It was the homemade sign posted along Wabasha County Road 21, which winds through the Zumbro River Valley, that caught the attention of Randy during a day trip in southeastern Minnesota. I missed the sign sporting an angler and a fish along with a list of all Mac’s offers:

BEER

BURGERS

RV CAMPING

FISHING

PULL TABS

That roadside signage was enough to make Randy reverse course and aim down a gravel road to Mac’s Park Place along 406th Avenue, rural Mazeppa. The restaurant/bar/campground is located between Mazeppa and Oronoco along the Zumbro River.

This is an area lovely in natural beauty. Winding river. A bit of backwoods wild. The ideal setting for a place like Mac’s, perhaps not widely-known to those without connections to the area.

Check back to see what I saw along the route to Mac’s, and then at Mac’s. I wondered at some point if we should continue on, not quite knowing what we were driving into…

© Copyright 2022 Audrey Kletscher Helbling

 

The place where everybody knows your name… August 12, 2014

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DO YOU EVER WONDER about a business name, how it came to be? I do.

A popular watering hole in Courtland, Minnesota. Look closely at the sign and you'll see a small crow perched on the letter "O."

A popular watering hole in Courtland, Minnesota. Look closely at the sign and you’ll see a small crow perched on the letter “O.”

Let’s take The Crow Bar and Grill in Courtland along U.S. Highway 14 just east of New Ulm. I’ve passed this bar countless times on my way to and from my native southwestern Minnesota. I even imbibed there many decades ago.

But not until this last trip, did my husband and I discuss the bar’s moniker. I’d always assumed The Crow Bar was linked to the obnoxious bird by the same name. I write “obnoxious” because crows  awaken me too many mornings with a raucous caw, caw, caw. I’m right, according to the miniscule crow perched on the “O” in the bar’s signage.

My husband, however, contemplated that the name could also refer to a crow bar, as in a tool. How clever. Perfect. The Crow Bar.

Never been inside this bar in downtown Farmington.

Never been inside this bar in downtown Farmington.

Over in Farmington, south of the Twin Cities metro, I came across Gossips Bar & Grill with the tag line, You heard it here first!

Now isn’t that the truth when it comes to bar talk and old crows.

© Copyright 2014 Audrey Kletscher Helbling

 

Pizza & beer on a Saturday night in Kilkenny January 26, 2013

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I SUGGESTED WE STOP for directions at the corner gas station.

“How hard can it be to find this place in Kilkenny?” my husband responded.

He was right. Kilkenny, population around 150, in Le Sueur County, runs only a few blocks in all directions. Surely we could find “the bar on top of the hill with the really good pizza,” per our friend LeAnn’s recommendation.

Atop the hill in Kilkenny by the water tower, we found the Liquor Hole.

Atop the hill in Kilkenny by the water tower, we found the Liquor Hole.

Just up the road from Bud’s Service, we found the Liquor Hole.

I expect in warm weather, the front patio is a popular dining and drinking spot at the Hole.

I expect in warm weather, the front patio is a popular dining and drinking spot at the Hole.

We arrived Saturday evening as the last wisps of daylight faded, enough time for me to snap a few outdoor shots before entering the Hole.

Inside we found your typical small town restaurant/bar—pool table in the corner, stools ringing a horseshoe bar, neon beer lights blazing, televisions blaring, opened pull tabs littering the bar top, smokers stepping out to light up a smoke…

A section of the dining area.

A section of the Liquor Hole.

No pool players yet early on a Saturday evening.

No pool players yet early on a Saturday evening.

Be sure to follow the bar's pool rules.

Be sure to follow the bar’s pool rules.

Lots of neon beer signs.

Lots of neon beer signs.

But there were a few surprises, like the homemade wood sign announcing Kilkenny’s inability to afford a town drunk and a fat-bottomed girl print I refused to photograph.

Kilkenny bar humor posted below the Bud Light sign.

Kilkenny bar humor posted below the Bud Light sign.

And when Randy asked for a Schell’s FireBrick beer, the bartender/owner looked at him and said, “Come on, this is Kilkenny.”

Alright then. We both ordered a Nordeast to go with our $11 House pizza topped with sausage, pepperoni, Canadian bacon, onion, mushrooms, green pepper and green olives. And just for the record, the pizza is not entirely homemade. The crust is pre-made. I asked.

The Liquor Hole's House pizza.

The Liquor Hole’s House pizza.

None-the-less, the pizza was thick and tasty, loaded with cheese and was delivered on a cardboard round with several small paper plates, plastic forks and a half-inch thick stack of napkins, most of which we used.

“Cuts down on the dishes,” Randy joked as he observed the disposable tableware.

But we didn’t mind. After all, in the bartender’s words, “This is Kilkenny.”

A last shot of the Liquor Hole before we got into the car and drove 15 miles back east to Faribault.

A last shot of the Liquor Hole before we got into the car and drove 15 miles back east to Faribault.

© Copyright 2013 Audrey Kletscher Helbling