A nineteen ten photo shows William Lisky and Marion Shrade in front and Herman Riebe and Adolph Minks above on a brick pile, stacking bricks just taken out of the kiln into an enormous pile; Minks later said nineteen ten was a good, hot dry summer, good for brickmaking. When an order was received, twenty thousand Brickton bricks were loaded into each boxcar on a nearby rail siding. The work was heavy, dusty, and seasonal, and brickmaking stopped when the weather was freezing. Most brickyard workers slept in barracks on the property where they worked. At Brickton's peak, about fifty men worked in each of the five brickyards, earning zero dollars and ninety-five cents to one dollar and fifteen cents per day for ten-hour days, and the summer brickyard payrolls had a large economic impact on nearby Princeton. The brickyards declined quickly in the nineteen twenties due to several factors, including competition from new brickyards closer to the Twin Cities and the arrival of concrete and concrete blocks as building materials. Another photo from about nineteen twenty-three to nineteen twenty-four at the R.P. Morton Brickyard pictures Anas Morton, brother of R.P. Morton, Bob Applegate, John Kuhn, Charlie Walker, and Howard Redmond. The very high quality clay near here was quickly recognized by European settlers, some of whom had brickmaking skills. Firewood for the massive football-field-long brick kilns was easy to buy from local farmers clearing wooded land for row crops. In eighteen eighty-six, the arrival of the Great Northern Railway provided economical transportation of up to twenty million Brickton bricks made each summer to buyers in Minnesota and beyond.