Photo by Matt Lien, Courtesy of Explore Minnesota
Marine on St. Croix challenges the limits of description: The challenge is not to fall into the pit of cliche. It’s a village, a hamlet, a well-kept secret. To call Marine on St. Croix cute seems like an egregious understatement. It’s north of Stillwater and south of Taylors Falls, placing it squarely in the crosshairs of Sunday-drive traffic. The site of the first commercial sawmill on the St. Croix hugs the riverbank and butts up against William O’Brien State Park. From its shore, you could skip a rock into Wisconsin. Blink and you’ll literally miss it.
If you were to describe Marine on St. Croix as a vibe or an aura, the word might be “exclusive”—not in an insular way, but certainly in a palpable one. Since the 1880s, the population has fluctuated between 530 and 740 people, who, by many accounts, would like to keep it that way. (According to a water management plan, the population is predicted to increase to 940 by 2040.)
Photo by Matt Lien, Courtesy of Explore Minnesota
The place feels like a studio backlot. Open Creek meanders into town, fed by seeps in the eastern hills, and thrums under Judd Street like distant applause. West of the main drag—Marine General Store, where visitors can find everything from pickled herring to flip-flops; local favorite Pete’s Pizza, which slings a buffalo chicken pie; and the world-class St. Croix Chocolate Co., earning national accolades since 2015—sits Jackson Meadow, a 145-acre parcel of prairie and wooded hills punctuated by modern housing clusters designed by award-winning Salmela Architect, whose critical regionalist approach complements the village’s aesthetics while preserving environmental integrity.
“Jackson Meadow has its own zoning rules that we created at the onset of the project two decades ago,” says Kai Salmela, AIA. “The argument we made at the time was that if we followed the existing zoning rules that are based largely on standard suburban codes, it would actually prohibit us from making the type of neighborhoods everyone loved in the historic Marine on St. Croix.”
Judd Street acts as Marine’s epicenter, where even the culverts running underground are thoughtfully appointed. Visitors can (and should) pick up a delicious nitro cold brew from St. Croix Coffee Roasters, which is positioned up a winding ramp just off Judd and behind Surf Yogurt Bar, before ducking into Marine Village Art Studios to browse some of Emily Anderson’s stellar landscape work and Katy Helen Kalt’s hand-cut mosaic surfboards.
Next, swing into Marine General for a trip back into your prelapsarian memory, when every knickknack was retro and special, from walking sticks to fishing tackle. Next, get a couple scoops from ’Nita Mae’s around the corner, then take the path down to Marine Village Landing, where Open Creek joins the St. Croix in foamy riffles.
“It’s like the town of Mayberry [from ‘The Andy Griffith Show’],” says Gordon Arcand, who owns and operates Marine General with his wife, Cheryl.
Cheryl concurs. “It’s very supportive, well-educated, open-minded, civic-minded, helpful,” she says. She reiterates: “Very supportive. Very supportive group of people.”
“Most of the local people know each other by name,” says Gordon. “And they’re within walking distance of the store. So, they’ll get to the store and that’s the social hour—they’ll sit and talk.”
Photo by Matt Lien, Courtesy of Explore Minnesota
It’s interesting that a river town should enjoy such stillness. The place feels preserved in a moment, yet the river in all its changing motion acts like a ticking clock, or, as author Annie Dillard puts it, “an active mystery, fresh every minute.”
The town is probably a lot like other towns—summers so hot all you can do is grimace at the incoming afternoon; winters with low skies and silent, the sun pale and vestigial as a xeroxed coin; the fall an explosion of color, sunlight hitting everything like a coat of fresh paint; and finally spring, when locals no doubt keep one eye on the St. Croix’s water levels (the river’s worst flood happened in 1965, when it filled downtown Stillwater with 94.10 feet of water). And it’s peaceful. According to Washington County Sheriff Dan Starry, “Marine on St. Croix has not had a homicide in at least the past 25 years.”
Although the town might be like other towns, it isn’t just like them. While many spots on the National Register of Historic Places try to capitalize on that history, à la your Fiddletowns and Deadwoods, Marine on St. Croix just is a storybook town in a beautiful setting—and that’s all it wants to be. Nothing more, and certainly nothing less.
