Description of Grounds

A combination of unusual geology and human intention has created a novel setting for the Oldenburg home. The home is screened from Chestnut Avenue on the north side by a straight line of groomed cedar trees stretching the length of the property's street frontage. The property is accessed from Chestnut Avenue by a driveway and pedestrian entrance marked by a trio of brick gateposts and ornamental iron gates. The driveway leads south up a slight rise to a single-story garage, and circles to the east toward the home and under the west side porte cochere before returning to the gated exit. The brick of the garage matches that of the home, with modern double garage doors on the north (drive) side, and a central, three-sided window bay facing east.

East-west concrete walkways provide access from the drive to the porches and entranceways on the north and south sides of the home. An unexplained, approximatley foot-high concrete platform extends several feet into the yard from the south side of the rear (south) walkway, aligned with the vestibule and sleeping porch. Simple foundation plantings are found on all sides of the home.

Open lawn, with scattered trees and bushes, surrounds the home on all four sides, but forces of nature also become evident away from the protective proches and planned walkways. A large, immobile stone outcropping serves as a central element in a garden space at the west end of the porte cochere. Towering secon-growth white pines are particularly noteable in the north-east corner of the property near the home. The broad lawn of the south side of the home opens onto five long, finger-like stone outcroppings that fan from east to west. The outcroppings are charactersitic of this part of the St. Louis River valley, some more than twenty feet high and covered with moss, ferns, pines, and other plant life.*

*These outcroppings are part of the Thomson Formation, the geologic designation of the area's bedrock of slate, greywacke, and siltstone, formed and folded under pressure abour 1.7 billion years ago during the middle pre-Cambrian period and esposed through tectonic activity and erosion, “Naturla History. Minnesota's Geology. Minnesota Departrment of Natural Resources.

In the small valleys between the outcroppings, groomed lawn and domesticated perennial plants can be found. Of these valley spaces, a grotto accessed by a walkway off the southeast corner of the home is a distinctive feature of the property.

Nestled between two of the stone outcroppings and running on an east-west line, the grotto is highlighted by the “Morning Glory Pool,” a conical concrete basin approximatley 32 feet in diameter and about 4.5 feet deep at the center. The pool is surrounfed by a concrete walkway, with a pedestal for statuary centered on the western approach, and an oval, concrete patio on the east side of the grotto, flanked by tall, narrow cedar trees in a nod to formal garden design. As noted in the builder's mark in the concrete Cloquet contractor E. E. Durkee laid the cement work around the pool in 1911. A large fountain in the center of the pool, constructed of stone-studded bowl mounted on a tapered pedestal, was added sometime after 1914, as was a tooth-like, natural slate edging surrounding the pool. Decorative rockwork is also evident with low walls of slate slabs, construced around the grotto at the base of the cliffs and along portions of the property border.

While the pool and evocative name are the central focus of the grotto, the top of the rock cliff to the north is accessible by a small switch-backed footpath. A flagpole is mounted atop the outcropping, erected by current owners on the site of a previous weather vane, which was retrieved from where it toppled and is now mounted on a shorter pole at the bottom of the path.

The Oldenburg home seems to mark the edge of the wilderness in both its landscape and its platting, as to the west of the property are found the forty-foot lots and other homes typical of a settled turn-of-the-century village addition. The grounds are largely surrounded by forest to the south and east, where the property abuts Jay Cooke State Park. The southern boundary of the property is defined by an abandoned Northern Pacific rail line, now the Willard Munger State Trail.

This recreational trail follows the St. Paul Duluth Railroad li ne, originally built aas the Lake Superior and Mississippi Railroad, which began operating in 1870, and later part of the Norhtern Pacific Railway. The trail was established in 1988 after rail service needs diminished and tracks were abandoned, It was named after Minnesota State senator and environmentalist Willard Munger, who promoted rails-to-trails initiatives. The trail stretches for 63 miles between Hinckley and Dultuh and is the longest paved trail in the world.