The ruins of the Fertile Brick & Tile Company are quite an exciting find, as most brickyards closed in the early 1900s. To find anything left at any of these locations is amazing. So here are some photos of what I found in Fertile, Minnesota.
Figure 1 shows the large clay pit that remains. There is a sign in the front right which shows where the ATV/snowmobile trail runs. In the back center you can see the back walls of the clay pit. It appears that the entire area from where this picture was taken to the far back walls was mined for clay.
Moving on, Figure 2 shows the electrical lines coming down to the site where the remaining buildings exist. Therefore, this site did exist into the advent of electricity. Although not pictured here, there was a sign near the clay pit which described how the Red River Valley Brick Company of Grand Forks purchased the Fertile Brick & Tile Company and managed the area in the early 1900s.
Although it is hard to see from this picture, the electrical lines come over a hill and down into the southern end of the clay pit. Pictures do not always give good perspectives of terrain.
Figure 3 is the perspective to the southwest from where the power lines into the site terminate. It appears to be either a kiln or some sort of drying shed. It is a low building, meaning it does not stand very high, and there are numerous doors in the front leading to long tunnels. On the bottom of each tunnel are steel rail tracks, where cars were probably pushed through the kiln/drying shed. The steel tracks are shown in Figure 4 and the long rods probably used to push the cars are shown in Figure 5.
There was another building attached to the kiln/drying sheds. I am not sure what exactly its purpose was, but am thinking it may have been some sort of control room. It is shown in Figure 7. It is a rather small building, maybe 15 by 15 feet, with a hole in the roof and a hole in the floor. It also contained metal tracks which led underneath the long tunnels. To try to explain that better, imagine that there was a basement under Figure 6. In that basement, there were tracks going from left to right (under the track going into the center of the picture in Figure 6). I imagine the heat was pushed into the basement and rose into each tunnel (like the one shown in Figure 6). The heat was needed for either baking the bricks or drying the wet bricks, I can't be sure.
Near these buildings was a pile of clay with bricks mixed into it (Figure 8) and thousands of bricks piled on top of wooden pallets (Figure 9). Wow!
This is a neat old site which should be preserved. History is just teeming in the area, not to mention it is very beautiful. Fertile is in an area of wooded rolling hills along a pretty little river. Just to the south of the site is a very picturesque golf course, which I have heard is a well kept secret. One other neat marker is an old water tower (Figure 10), which was located on the western side of the site, up in the trees on a hill. Again, I can't be certain this water tower was used for the brick yard, but it probably was.
This is truly a historic gem for brick history in the state of Minnesota. If I had the money, I would definitely preserve this site. Not everything is left, but there are quite a few jewels left for us to see how the brick workers of the past help mold our great state.