NOBLES’ UNDERTAKING
On June 15, 1857, explorer and land speculator William H. Nobles approached former Minnesota Territory Governor Willis Gorman on the streets of St. Paul and publicly assaulted him. Gorman had accused Nobles of incompetence and worse in his management of a road-building project that, had it been successful, would have supplanted the popular wagon roads leading west from Independence, Missouri, with a new road starting in central Minnesota.
Born in New York’s Genesee County in 1816, Nobles, a machinist by trade, had a restless nature and boundless enthusiasm for adventure. By 1841 he’d made it to Wisconsin Territory, where helped erect the first flour mill in St. Croix Falls. Drifting west, by 1848 he was building wagons in St. Paul, soon-to-be capital of Minnesota Territory. Two years later Nobles headed
