The Falls That Built the City

The Falls That Built the City. . Here at the Falls of St. Anthony, where waterpower, river transportation, and eventually railroads came together, the industrial heart of the upper Midwest began to beat in the mid-1800s. Keen-eyed factory and mill owners from the states of the Northeast saw in the falls a "Niagara of the West." Although steam power was in its infancy and electric power unheard of, these men knew how to use the power of falling water. They harnessed the energy produced by a 50-foot drop in the Mississippi with a mechanical system of millraces, waterwheels, gears, and rotating shafts., By 1850 four sawmills stood along a dam that crossed the river's east channel a few blocks upstream from this point. They cut logs floated down from lumber camps along the upper Mississippi and Rum rivers. After milling, boards were carried around the falls in sluiceways, then made into rafts and sent on to markets farther down the Mississippi. By the time of the Civil War, an assortment of mills, machine shops, foundries, and small factories lined the east bank and Hennepin Island., When settlement opened across the river, the village of Minneapolis grew rapidly on the west bank. In 1872 it absorbed the older town of St. Anthony on this side. The combined industrial center became both rival and partner to St. Paul, 12 miles downriver. Located at the head of navigation for most Mississippi River steamboats, St. Paul was the hub for land routes that fanned out north and west, to Lake Superior, Canada, and the Dakota plains. In the years after the Civil War, steel rails were built along those routes. The network of railroads, centered in what would become the Twin Cities metropolitan area, brought tons of grain to the mills beside the falls and carried flour and industrial products to the markets of the world., (panel above marker on kiosk) , The Mississippi River , The Mississippi River is one of the largest rivers in the world. It divides east from west through the center of the United States: boundary, obstacle, water supply, drainage system, highway. It is 2,350 miles long and flows from Lake Itasca in northern Minnesota southward to New Orleans and the Gulf of Mexico. Its watershed covers 1,231,000 square miles and drains portions of thirty-two states and two Canadian provinces., Wild and natural resources abound in the river corridor. Forty percent of North American waterfowl migrate along its flyway. As a major mid-continent waterway, the Mississippi has carried people and products north and south over thousands of years., The river has stirred imagination and creativity in the worlds of art, music, dance, and literature. Stories of human time and habitation are found in cities and in open spaces; in bridges, dams, and navigation systems; in houses, farms, and industrial buildings; in parks, burial grounds, and archaeological remains. They are stories of places and people who have known and lived near the Mississippi, past and present., The Falls of St. Anthony , The Falls of St. Anthony is the only major waterfall on the Mississippi River. It has meant many things to people over time: a place of wonder and mystery; a landmark for travelers, explorers, traders, and tourists; a waterpower harnessed by early industrialists to produce wealth, power, and international fame for the region., The falls were not always where they are today. Over many centuries, forces of erosion caused them to move upstream to their present location, where they were stabilized in the 1870s to protect the waterpower for the growing city of Minneapolis. That pathway of erosion defined the geography of the Twin Cities., St. Paul was settled in the 1840s, at the head of steamboat navigation on the Mississippi, near the original site of the falls some 12,000 years ago. It became the territorial capital of Minnesota in 1849 and the state capital in 1858., Minneapolis, twelve miles upstream from St. Paul, developed in the 1850s around the waterpower of the falls, to become the flour-milling capital of the nation from 1880 to 1930 and the largest city in Minnesota today.