Photos: Marine Community Library
On many fair-weather days during the school year, the town of Marine on St. Croix swells with the chatter of children as they make their way through town to their library.
For select hours during the school year, the doors of the volunteer-run Marine Community Library open for the children. It’s a routine beloved by both the students, who have their own library cards and are often known by name, and the broader community. Lynn Bjorkman, Marine Library Association co-chair, shares that folks in town adore watching the kids come down the hill, taking in that weekly reminder of all that community action made possible. “Many people will say that [the library is] the hub, or it’s the heartbeat. I think it’s kind of the soul,” Bjorkman says.
It’s been 15 years since volunteers took leadership of the Marine Community Library, a shift necessitated by Washington County’s announcement in 2011 that it would close its Marine branch. Due to immediate community support of financial gifts and volunteer hours, the library, a fixture of the community since 1968, was never at risk of closing. Residents of Marine on St. Croix, May Township and Scandia came together to relaunch the Marine Library Association (MarLA), a nonprofit volunteer organization that manages the library’s committees, finances and operations. “People just jumped in and started working really hard, and they built something beautiful,” Bjorkman says.
A negotiated agreement with Washington County ensures Marine Community Library’s continued use of the county’s booklockers and inclusion in the interlibrary loan system, Bjorkman shares. The City of Marine on St. Croix generously provides the space for the library and public programming at Marine Village Hall.
Students from Marine Village School enjoy special library hours at Marine Community Library, where they can use their laminated library cards (complete with their own signatures) to check out books.
Today, 80 volunteers staff the library three hours a day, six days a week. These community members also fill nine active committees and pursue broad and inclusive programming, which now includes frequent author talks, a documentary series (in collaboration with the Marine Film Society) and River Radio, a podcast hosted by Marine residents Gayle Knutson and Jim Maher. “It’s people that care so, so much, and do such great work,” Bjorkman says.
The Marine Community Library is a collaborative effort that is characteristic of the area, which is also home to a volunteer fire department, Marine Mills Folk School and the Marine Village School, which was created by residents in 2022 after Stillwater Area Schools closed Marine Elementary School in 2017. In Marine on St. Croix, that can-do attitude is “in your DNA,” Bjorkman says. “Everybody’s very aware of what other people are doing and how much work it takes to accomplish those things.”
It was the passion and support of dedicated community members, led by the first librarian, Grace Grady, that saw the establishment of Marine’s first library nearly 60 years ago. Some still remember the sign on Grady’s desk that read “Absolutely No Silence” and communicated her intention for the library to be a community hub. Decades since her passing, her hope and heart remain. Last year, the library expanded its bookshelf capacity by 25 percent, and MarLA was recently awarded a capacity-building grant from the St. Croix Valley Foundation.
“If she could see it today, she’d be doing cartwheels,” Bjorkman says, adding that Grady’s legacy is shared with the librarian’s friend, Elizabeth Jordan, who bestowed a significant gift upon Grady’s passing in 2001. “There is [a] very soulful wish, I think, for everybody in this community to honor a beautiful vision like that, and to perpetuate it.”
