NEW ULM, Minn. (AP) - Clam shells littered the banks of the Minnesota River at the spot near New Ulm where a Free Press (https://bit.ly/18J82G0 ) reporter and photographer rested during a canoe trip in 1998. Sightings of fresh water mollusks, many of them the size of dinner plates, were common from Ortonville on down the river.
During their voyage down the Minnesota, Tim Krohn and John Cross met up with people who pay close attention to clams and other river creatures.
Henry Quade of the Minnesota River Data Center in Mankato told them clams are a key indicator of the quality of the river.
“They need fairly clean water and a fairly imbedded (river) bottom. They don’t do well with a lot of silt,” Quade said.
Mike Deinken, a native of this area and a lifelong river watcher, said fresh water clams seemed to be making a comeback.
Clams may be doing well all along the 332-mile stream, but the Minnesota River no longer has the diversity of clams present at the turn of the 20th century.
A Minnesota River Assessment study completed in 1992 showed there were 18 varieties compared to 36 varieties in the early 1900s.
From 1912 to 1923, the clamming industry boomed all along the Minnesota River with New Ulm as its hub. From the grain elevator down to Riverfront Park, a massive clam bed still blankets the river bottom in the summer.
Local anglers say it’s a common occurrence for one of the big clams to glomp on to bait being trolled over the bed.
The greenish-brownish colors and mossy look of the freshwater mollusk’s outer shell blend in well with the same-size rocks found along river bottoms. The shell’s white inside surface is very smooth and has hints of pinks and blues.
Before the advent of plastic buttons, about 52 train-car loads of shells each summer were hauled out of the New Ulm area to a factory in Muscatine, Iowa. There, round shapes were punched out of shells for use as buttons.
At one time, close to 37 percent of the world’s buttons came out of Muscatine and half of the local workforce was employed in the industry. By 1905, 1.5 billion pearl buttons were being produced annually in the town, according to the Muscatine History and Industry Museum.
Vernard Lundin described clamming on the Minnesota in his book “As the Twig is Bent: Growing Up in the Minnesota River Valley.” The following is an excerpt of the book, reprinted in a Blue Earth County Historical Society newsletter in October 1984. He told the story of two young men - Lawrence and Wallace Goodell - who spent one summer on a flat-bottom scow, catching hundreds of pounds of clams. They devised a tool out of a 10-foot pipe and several dull-edged hooks. As they dragged the bar over the river bottom, clams would instinctively close their shells in on the hooks.
Clammers enjoyed a profit from their catches, but they rarely made meals out the meat found inside the shells, Lundin wrote. Onions and vegetables added in to a clam stew could not disguise their bad taste. Roasted or fried clams were tough and unpalatable.
After they were pulled from the water, the clams’ died. Their decayed bodies were used as chicken or hog feed, or fertilizer.
Flesh inside the cracked opened shells was examined by clammers who hoped to find roundish, calcifications that had formed over little grains of sand. Fresh-water pearls discovered inside river mollusks are rarely large or perfect orbs. When a nice specimen was first found, an old-time clammer stored it in a used tobacco can he kept in his pocket.
Good quality pearls generally were worth about $35. Insignificant pearls of various sizes and shapes - slugs - were sold to costume jewelry manufacturers. If a perfect pearl was found, it was sold discreetly, and the price it brought was rarely revealed.
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Information from: The Free Press, https://www.mankatofreepress.com
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