Facts About Minneapolis
Descendants of first peoples, Dakota Sioux were the region’s sole residents when French explorers arrived in 1680. For a time, amicable relations were based on fur trading. Gradually, more European-American settlers arrived, competing for game and other resources with the Native Americans. After the Revolutionary War, Great Britain granted the land east of the Mississippi to the United States. In the early 19th century, the United States acquired land to the west from France in the Louisiana Purchase. Fort Snelling, just south of present-day Minneapolis, was built in 1819 by the United States Army. It attracted traders, settlers and merchants, spurring growth in the area. The United States government pressed the Mdewakanton band of the Dakota to sell their land, allowing people arriving from the East to settle there. Preoccupied with the Civil War, the United States government reneged on its promises of cash payments to the Dakota, resulting in hunger, the Dakota War, internment and hardship. The Minnesota Territorial Legislature authorized Minneapolis as a town in 1856, on the Mississippi’s west bank. Minneapolis incorporated as a city in 1867, the year rail service began between Minneapolis and Chicago. It later joined with the east-bank city of St. Anthony in 1872. By 1871, the west river bank had twenty-three businesses, including flour mills, woolen mills, iron works, a railroad machine shop, and mills for cotton, paper, sashes, and planing wood. Due to the occupational hazards of milling, six local sources of artificial limbs were competing in the prosthetics business by the 1890s. The farmers of the Great Plains grew grain that was shipped by rail to the city’s 34 flour mills. Millers have used hydropower elsewhere since the 1st century B.C., but the results in Minneapolis between 1880 and 1930 were so remarkable the city has been described as “the greatest direct-drive waterpower center the world has ever seen.”
A father of modern milling in America and founder of what became General Mills, Cadwallader C. Washburn converted his business from gristmills to truly revolutionary technology, including “gradual reduction” processing by steel and porcelain roller mills capable of producing premium-quality pure white flour very quickly. Some ideas were developed by William Dixon Gray and some acquired through industrial espionage from Hungary by William de la Barre. Charles A. Pillsbury and the C.A. Pillsbury Company across the river were barely a step behind, hiring Washburn employees to immediately use the new methods.The hard red spring wheat that grows in Minnesota became valuable ($0.50 profit per barrel in 1871 increased to $4.50 in 1874), and Minnesota “patent” flour was recognized at the time as the best in the world.
Not until later did consumers discover the value in the bran (which contains wheat’s vitamins, minerals and fiber) that “…Minneapolis flour millers routinely dumped” into the Mississippi. After 1883, a Minneapolis miller virtually started a new industry when he began to sell bran byproduct as animal feed. Millers cultivated relationships with academic scientists, especially at the University of Minnesota. Those scientists backed them politically on many issues, such as in the early 20th century when health advocates in the nascent field of nutrition criticized the flour “bleaching” process. At peak production, a single mill at Washburn-Crosbymade enough flour for 12 million loaves of bread each day; by 1900, 14.1 percent of America’s grain was milled in Minneapolis. Further, by 1895, through the efforts of silent partner William Hood Dunwoody, Washburn-Crosby exported four million barrels of flour a year to the United Kingdom. When exports reached their peak in 1900, about one third of all flour milled in Minneapolis was shipped overseas.
The history and economic growth of Minneapolis are tied to water, the city’s defining physical characteristic, which was brought to the region during the last ice age 10,000 years ago. Ice blocks deposited in valleys by retreating glaciers created the lakes of Minneapolis. Fed by a receding glacier and Lake Agassiz, torrents of water from a glacial river cut the Mississippi riverbed and created the river’s only waterfall, Saint Anthony Falls, important to the early settlers of Minneapolis. Lying on an artesian aquifer and flat terrain, Minneapolis has a total area of 58.4 square miles (151.3 km2) and of this 6% is water,Water supply is managed by four watershed districts that correspond to the Mississippi and the city’s three creeks. Twelve lakes, three large ponds, and five unnamed wetlands are within Minneapolis.The city center is located at 45° N latitude. The city’s lowest elevation of 686 feet (209 m) is near where Minnehaha Creek meets the Mississippi River. The site of the Prospect Park Water Tower is often cited as the city’s highest point and a placard in Deming Heights Park denotes the highest elevation. A spot at 974 feet (297 m) in or near Waite Park in Northeast Minneapolis, however, is corroborated by Google Earth as the highest ground.
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