A Brief History Of Minneapolis

This website is a labor of love. It's not flashy, but it contains quite a lot of interesting information that I hope to share with others.

A good place to start thinking about the history of Minneapolis is to ask "Why is this city here?" The answer to that question lies at the base of the gorge that divides the city and later separates it from St. Paul. The Mississippi River flows through this gorge and through the city of Minneapolis. The only naturally occurring waterfall on the whole of the Mississippi river is located here and it is because of this 50' vertical drop that the city of Minneapolis exists today. Early settlers took advantage of the power of falling water to power the early industries in Minneapolis.

The lumber industry and the flour milling industry were the earliest users of this power. Minneapolis was a natural for lumber milling. The great North woods of Minnesota contained a stand of harvestable trees that was roughly the size of the state of Maine. Trees would be cut in the winter and stacked besides creeks and streams up North. When Spring came, the snow would melt, swelling up these small tributaries to the Mississippi. When the water levels rose, the loggers would dump the logs in and they would float downstream to the Mississippi River and then on to Minneapolis. The early lumber mills were powered by water wheels, then later by turbines. When usable steam power was available to the lumber millers, they started moving upriver from the falls. Instead of powering their mills with water, they started using their wood refuse, sawdust and wood chips to power their new steam plants. Eventually the flour millers sort of crowded out the lumber millers at the falls and eventually the lumber mills lined both sides of the Mississippi, upriver from the falls in Minneapolis. Minneapolis had led the nation in lumber production from 1899 to about 1906, but by 1920 the North woods had been deforested and all lumber operations in Minneapolis ceased. Today, the only relic of these booming times is the Lumber Exchange building in downtown Minneapolis. All the mills are gone.

The flour milling industry has had a presence at the Falls of St. Anthony since 1822, and business started really taking off after about 1880. Due to the power from the falls, the roller milling process, the middlings purifier, and its proximity to the great wheat fields of Minnesota, Iowa and the Dakotas, Minneapolis let the country in flour production from 1880 to 1930. Pillsbury, Washburn-Crosby (General Mills after 1928), and Northwestern Consolidated Milling companies are three companies that were founded here to take up the business of flour milling. After 1930, the advantages that the Falls and the location of the mills afforded to the millers started to not matter as much and because of this, milling operations dispersed to places like Buffalo, New York, and to various places in the Midwest. Today, there is still much wheat being milled in Minneapolis, but only 3 mills are operating at the falls and none of them use water power. The legacy of flour milling in this city includes the city's size, it's Easternness (most of the pioneer millers were New Englanders), and some fabulous old buildings in the milling district and various other places around the city.

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