Good Thunder was settled shortly after the Winnebago Indians were removed from this area of Minnesota in 1864. Ironically the town was named after Chief Good Thunder who was not Winnebago, but a Dakota Indian. Good Thunder was a Christian and he had remained peaceful during the uprising of 1862. The Winnebago had also remained peaceful during the uprising, but tensions were high in the years that followed the massacre and to the remaining White Settlers “an Indian was an Indian”. The fact that the land here was extremely rich, fertile and prime for settlement was also not lost on anyone. The Winnebago’s had originally been moved from Wisconsin to make way for the first wave of settlement, primarily German’s that arrived in the 1840’s and 1850’s. News of the bounties of this new land was sent back to the “Mother County” and when their Brothers, Sisters and Cousins arrived they had to look further west and the Winnebago’s were moved again.
The village of Good Thunder was first surveyed in 1871 and the post office opened that year. The first schoolhouse was built in 1873. The railroad had been completed thru Good Thunder in 1869-1870 and a depot was added shortly after. Over the next several years numerous businesses and even a three-story hotel were built in the town. By the 1880's Good Thunder was booming. In an 1892 publication, Good Thunder was noted to have: 4 churches, 2 saloons, 2 telegraph receivers, 2 blacksmith shops, 2 general stores, 2 grain elevators, 2 flour mills, 2 hardware stores, 2 millinery stores, 2 brick yards, a bank, a book store, a boot & shoe store, a drug store, a furniture store, a harness shop, a hotel, a jeweler, a livery stable, a lumber dealer, a meat market, a doctor, a restaurant, a tailor shop, a creamery and a newspaper. The historic St. John's Lutheran Church just south of the cache was built in 1890’s and still stands today. The bell tower across the street was saved from the old High School, which was located just a few blocks away and stood for all most 100 years, but was recently demolished. My mother graduated from that High School and went on to be the first collage graduate in her family.
As you can see from the 1st photo below most of the original buildings on Main Street are also now gone. The bank building next to where the cache is located was a Saloon at the time this photo was taken about 1910. I have included other photos of the downtown from different times in history to show what was once here. Like most of the small towns in Southern Minnesota, Good thunder is now mainly a bedroom community. But there is enough left in combination with the photos to show that this was once a self-sufficient small town, with all the goods and services that the local population required. A slice of a bygone era that will probably never come again.
