90-year-old Sibley Park puzzle a piece of local Americana

Mar. 20—Michael Miller was a talented German immigrant who operated a woodworking shop in Mankato in the early and mid-1900s, was an accomplished oil painter, dabbled in photography and built some folk art projects for fun.

One of his sons, Dick Miller, became a widower last October when his wife of 67 years died and he decided restoring one of his dad's pieces of Americana would help keep his mind off his loss.

"When my wife died, I knew I needed something to do this winter," said Dick, 91, who lives on Fair Street in Mankato.

He dug out an old wooden 3-D puzzle his dad made some 90 years ago, depicting Sibley Park in Mankato.

The interlocking jigsaw puzzle was made of wood cut with a bandsaw in the Miller Woodwork Shop in about 1930. The shop was attached to the back of Michael's home at 1435 N. Fourth St.

The puzzle depicts scenes that were there at the time, including the railroad track and trestle that still exists, a "Grand Lawn" area, a museum building, the big hill in the middle of the park, and other buildings and fences that Dick Miller remembers seeing there as a kid.

Trees on the puzzle are made of old wooden match sticks with green attached to the tops. "I had to replace a lot of the trees," Dick said.

He also had to cut and replace a few of the puzzle pieces that were missing and re-created a few other pieces on the puzzle's landscape.

The Blue Earth and Minnesota rivers are painted around two edges of the puzzle, and the Judson Bottom Road is depicted on the far edge of the puzzle, across the Minnesota River.

Miller's dad was born in Temmels, Germany, in 1885 or 1886 and came to the U.S. in the early 1900s, settling in the Twin Cities before moving to Mankato where he worked as a carpenter before opening his own shop.

Dick and a brother later took over running their dad's workshop.

"He died in 1954, two months after I came home from Korea," Dick said of his dad.