Transcript Geography of the Twin Cities Development Part 2: Walking City David A. Lanegran Geography Department Macalester College.

Geography of the Twin Cities
Development
Part 2: Walking City
David A. Lanegran
Geography Department
Macalester College
A view of St Paul looking NE from the Court House
roof in 1857.This scene shows the results of the rampant real
estate speculation that characterized the early years of St.
Paul. There was no land use regulation, so every person
worked independently, promoting their land as the best site for
all future development.
This map shows the pattern of annexations that resulted from the
expansion of the city. The map is worth pondering because it would seem that the
founders of St. Paul did not comprehend the forces of urbanization and could not
foresee how large the city would become. Resistance to annexation by farmers on the
edge of the city is also a constraining factor on the process of expanding city limits.
However, the fact that the aggressive pioneer developers did not clearly see the future
growth should make us pause and consider how large we think the Twin Cities will be
fifty years from now.
The developers of Minneapolis
were also cautious about extending the limits
of their city. It is interesting to note how the
Twin Cities have defended axes of growth.
St. Paul grew westward along the historic
path of the ox carts, the territorial road and
the railroad, toward the Falls of St. Anthony,
while Minneapolis, jumping the river
development, followed a north-south axis.
This panoramic view of St Paul form
1867 shows a bustling river town just after the
end of the Civil War. The map shows how realestate developers added separate pieces to the
city and these additions did not always match
the older subdivision. We can also see the two
rival river landings - the upper and lower levees.
Eventually the lower land at the foot of Jackson
Street became the dominant port for river
activity. The three islands in the river are
Harriet, Raspberry, and Coal. The river was
unregulated during these years.
By late summer, the water was quite shallow and river pilots had to keep careful watch for sand
bars and snags; navigation was not practical above St. Paul in late summer. However, during the high
water season, boats could steam right up to the Falls of St. Anthony and up the Minnesota River to a series
of small ports. St. Paul was not the true head of navigation but rather the practical head of navigation. The
presence of the large gap in the river bluffs caused by an earlier version of the Mississippi (now occupied
by Phalen Creek) provided early travelers easy access from the river bank to the higher land and beyond.
This view of Minneapolis in the post Civil War era shows the busy
industrial town centered on the Falls of St. Anthony. The power site was known to
the early pioneers but the Falls are so large that they had to wait for sophisticated
mill builders before the potential of the Falls could be captured. At first the falls
powered sawmills. As the flour milling and marketing technology improved, the
sawmills were displaced by more profitable flour mills.
This 1874 view of Minneapolis shows the roof of the Winslow House
Hotel in the foreground. This hotel was given to Rev Dr. Edward Duffield Neil by
Charles McAlester to provide the base for the Baldwin School, now Macalester
College. The view shows the falls, Nicolett Island, and the rapidly growing
commercial core and residential districts on the West Bank.
The 1874 panorama of St. Paul is dominated by the pastoral scene showing the
river buff were George Street starts down the bluff. The Twin Spired Church of the
Assumption, visible on the skyline, is still standing; however, none of the other buildings in the
scene survived intact. This view shows us how important the upper landing was to the city.
This fascinating graph shows how urban entrepreneurs have
to continue to substitute resources and industrial processes to make a
city livable over the long term. Geographers sometimes call this process
the "invention of resources." This graph shows how the basic industry of
Minneapolis changed during its first century. The graph is logarithmic, so
the curves are flattened. None-the-less, the spectacular rise and fall of
the timber industry is apparent. The timber industry is a perfect example
of several laws of economic geography.
The first is regional complementarity, which can be explained by the
following example: In Minnesota, there was demand for timber in the
grassland regions being settled by agriculturists, and the nearby forest
regions could be harvested to provide the wood. When a product loses
bulk in the course of processing, such as changing tree trunks into
boards, the mills must locate near the resources to reduce the cost of
shipping the final product to the consumer region. If the logs were
shipped from sawmills located in Iowa, producers would have to pay the
transportation costs for the bark, sawdust and other waste elements
produced by the timber industry.
As a result, Minnesota timber was sent to the prairie farmlands and food and money were sent back to
Minnesota. However, the loggers harvested the trees and moved on. Once the supply of cheap trees was
exhausted, the logging industry moved on and the industrialists sought a new resource - wheat. The milling of
wheat into flour caused a huge boom in the city's economy, but by the 1930s, the national center of wheat moved
to Buffalo, New York.
By the time this view of the Falls District was published, the economy was booming. Each side of
the river had been brought into production by the diversion of water from above the falls through a system of
tunnels that contained turbines. The water was discharged into the river below the falls, and the kinetic
energy was used to operate extensive mills. The East Bank was dominated by the Pillsbury A. Mill and the
West Bank by the Washburn Crosby A. Mill. These two corporations were locked in an intensive production
rivalry to claim the world's record of daily mill production. In order to insure a supply of water in the late
summer and fall, the upper Mississippi was dammed and converted to reservoirs. The wheat for the mills
came from the Red River Valley in the North. This view also shows the Stonearch Bridge, built by James J.
Hill, to get the product to and from the mills on the West Bank.
This advertisement invites people
to take a scenic ride from St. Paul upstream
to see the romantic river gorge. It must have
been a warm year because the river would
frequently freeze in this stretch. Nonetheless,
we can see how the Mississippi was
perceived as a multiple use resource. It was
both industrial and recreational and provide
both water and a place for discarded waste.