Tour to Mark 40th Anniversary of Woodbury Heritage Society

Wayne-Schilling-at-Miller-Barn-July

Woodbury Heritage Society President Wayne Schilling poses outside Miller Barn in Woodbury in July 2023. (Courtesy of Woodbury Heritage Society)

By  | [email protected] | Pioneer Press

The Woodbury Heritage Society is celebrating its 40th anniversary this weekend with a “History in Your Backyard” tour of the city.

The free tour, which runs from 1 to 4 p.m. Sunday, starts at Heritage House, located at the southeast corner of Radio Drive and Lake Road. There, participants can grab a map and a passport to learn about 10 historically significant landmarks in Woodbury.

Among the stops: …the Kavanaugh Log Cabin, the District 25-Middleton School, the United Methodist Church, the Miller Barn, the Oehlke Farmstead, the Spangenberg Farmstead, and the Burr Oak exhibit in the city’s public works building.

The sites can be visited in any order, but participants should plan to end at Miller Barn in Valley Creek Park, where refreshments will be served and prizes will be awarded.

Members of the Woodbury Heritage Society will be at each site explaining its historic significance, said Wayne Schilling, the society’s president.

Schilling, 78, is famous for being the city’s last dairy farmer. The family farm, which had been in the family for 150 years, was sold in 2014; it’s now the site of Saint Therese Senior Living of Woodbury.

Schilling is a fifth-generation farmer whose family settled in the area in 1856. That’s when two brothers, William Fred Schilling and Fred William Schilling, arrived in the area and set up homesteads, he said.

“The land brokers advertised it as good land. They failed to mention the rocks,” Schilling said. “It would have been nice if they had lived 10 miles apart, but no it was just a ¼-mile apart. Because life wasn’t complicated enough when William Fred had his first son, he named him Fred William.”

For more information, go to woodburyheritage.org/history-in-your-backyard.