Euclid (Ernie) J. Bourgeois was a civil engineer who came to the Nebish area and worked as a surveyor in 1896. In 1898 he moved to Bemidji and worked for Marcus D. Stoner, Beltrami County Surveyor and Bemidji City Engineer. He worked as a civil engineer in Bemidji through the 1930s.
His notes and manuscript materials for his reminiscences were entitled “Thoughts While Strolling” which was published in Dr. Charles Vandersluis’ book, Mainly Logging. The first half of the manuscript concerns his early years in Wisconsin. Next is an account of the two years he worked for Halvorson Richards on the Red Lake Transportation Company survey in the Nebish country from 1896 to 1898. Next he discussed his first two years in Bemidji from 1898 to 1890, during which time he became established in the surveying business with Marcus D. Stoner. The final section of the manuscript contains excerpts from an August 14, 1955, taped discussion of his manuscript with other Bemidji residents.
Ernie Bourgeois lived at 510 Beltrami Avenue and was greatly respected by those who knew him. He was a self-educated surveyor who served as city engineer of Bemidji and who assisted in the platting of most of its streets. In 1901 he had the distinction of making one of the first maps of Beltrami county.
Born the oldest of seven children in 1871 at Chippewa Falls, Wis., he was the son of a timber cruiser and logger. He was educated in Wheaton township near his farm home and later in Chippewa Falls. In 1884 his mother died, and Ernie, then 13, was boarded out with a farm family. He left school at the age of 14, less than a year after the death of his mother and attached himself to his father and accompanied him on his timber cruising trips into the wilderness. At first he worked without pay. It was Frederick Weyerhauser who gave him his first pay check.
After spending the winter of 1896 working in the surveying camp as a cook, Bourgeois joined the survey crew as an axeman and remained with the project until it reached Red Lake. He then made his way to Bemidji, arriving October 18, 1898. He wrote, “I got to Bemidji one evening about 8 p.m. and found that Bemidji had a water works system at that time, plank or wooden walks, but going into concrete walks.”
After a week or so at odd jobs along the Mississippi river west of Lake Irving, he went to work in a logging camp at Lasalle Lake for the Brainerd Lumber Co and worked until the spring of 1899.
In the spring of 1899, he was commissioned to inspect a boom of logs that were tied on to Bear Island in Leech Lake and to make a report on the contents to the surveyor general’s office at St. Paul. After that he came back to Bemidji . While working with the crew surveying a spur for the Brainerd & Northern Minnesota Railway Co, he became acquainted with M. D. Stoner, who taught Ernie how to use a transit and some of the finer points of surveying. He took Ernie in as a partner in 1899. He wrote, we took inventory of the line up to Bemidji, made a survey for log spur 75, which cleaned up the timber along Kabekona Creek valley.”
In 1900, Bourgeois started the staking and platting of townsites, surveying township and county roads, cemeteries, organizing city and village maps, a county map in 1901, all of which required revising more or less up to the present time. Levels and grades for sidewalks required a lot of time, up to this and the future.
“In 1902,” he wrote, “began the survey on the Mississippi for the flowage of the power dam below Lake Bemidji. The Crookston Lumber Co. came along in this year. In 1904, some county ditches were dug. In 1904-5 the Red Lake Railway got to Bemidji and joined us with Redby. In 1905, J. J. McCarty got flowing well No. 1 drilled. In 1906 Bemidji’s sanitary sewer system was begun. Baudette was platted and it opened up the north part of Beltrami county. In 1909, J. J. McCarty drilled the No. 2 flowing well and the water tank and tower of 100,000 gallons capacity was constructed. In 1910 the Soo Line Railway came to Bemidji and the Third Street concrete pavent, between Minnesota – Bemidji avenues was placed, and our judicial ditches in the tcounter were started, also the city storm sewers were started. In 1911, the first (and only) half of our sewer system’s septic tank was completed. In 1912, J. J. McCarty drilled the city’s No. 3 flowing well. In 1913 Diamond Point Park got going . In 1914, the steel bridge at Lake BEmidji outlet was constructed. In 1916-17, the concrete bridge over the river between Irving and Lake Bemidji was constructed. In 1919, I got to be the city’s engineer and superintendent of the water department. In 1921, the city’s white way construction was accepted by its council and along in 1922 on May 23, I received my last City of Bemidji’s pay check.”
Working for Stoner, first as a chainman, then as a rodman and later as a qualified surveyor himself, Bourgeois played an important role in the platting of most of the townsites in the area including much of the city of Bemidji. His lifetime spanned the history of Bemidji from an infant lumber town to a modern city. Ernie Bourgeois died on Feb 14, 1960 at the Lutheran Hospital in Bemidji and is buried at Greenwood Cemetery.
For his historical account of the early days and for his care in preserving the valuable land survey records of the county, he was elected to an honorary membership in the Beltrami County Historical Society. These maps and survey reports, many of them carefully prepared in longhand, have become a part of the society’s records. (Bemidji Daily Pioneer, April 22, 1958; Feb 15, 1960; Vertical File, BCHS, Bemidji)