Anthony, are two modern cities with a population of almost four hundred
thousand. The pioneer settler died a few months ago and the first child
born there is now but passing middle life. And yet a little more than half
a century after the landing of the Pilgrims the cross of Christ and the
arms of France were carved on an oak tree which stood on the site of the
present city of Minneapolis.
In the summer of 1680 Louis Hennepin, a Recollet monk, in company with
Michael Accault and a Picard named Du Gay first explored the Upper
Mississippi. Hennepin wrote a famous description of his travels, and gave
the name to the falls he had discovered. But La Salle, Hennepin's
fellow-voyager across the Atlantic, was the first to write a description of
the Falls of St. Anthony, from information which must have been furnished
by one of Hennepin's party.
[Illustration THE FALLS OF ST. ANTHONY ABOUT 1850.]
For almost a century after Hennepin no white man visited the Falls of St.
Anthony. In 1776, Captain Jonathan Carver, of Connecticut, started on an
exploring expedition, to the Northwest and reached the falls about the
middle of November. Carver made the first picture of the falls and gives an
accurate description, from which it appears that the island which is now
many feet below the waterfall was then in its midst. Carver greatly
appreciated the beauty of the country, but, like Hennepin, passed away
leaving only his description and his picture. The War of the Revolution
came and left no trace on the Northwest. At its close the sovereignty of
France and of the new nation which had been born into the world faced each
other on the banks of the Mississippi. In 1803 the west as well as the east
bank became part of the domain of the United States. But the inhabitants
knew nothing of the change until Captain Zebulon M. Pike, of the army, came
to put an end to alleged improper transactions on the part of certain
British traders. On an island a few miles below the falls Pike held a
council with the Sioux and signed a treaty which extinguished the Indian
title to a tract of land extending nine miles on each side of the river
north from the mouth of the Minnesota River, and including the Falls of St.
Anthony. Twelve years later Major Long, with two grandsons of Carver,
ascended the river from St. Louis in a six-oared skiff, and wrote that "the
murmuring of the cascade, the roaring of the river and the thunder of the
cataract all contribute to render the scene the most interesting and
magnificent of any I ever before witnessed."
About 1811 the philanthropic Earl of Selkirk attempted to establish a
colony in the Red River Valley. Six years later it was threatened by
starvation. The noble Earl then visited the country, and his presence
caused so much disquietude in the breasts of the Indian agents that,
fearing improper foreign influence over the Indians, they induced the
Government to establish a military post in the country. In August, 1819,
Colonel Leavenworth, with ninety-eight soldiers of the Fifth Infantry,
pitched their tents near the mouth of the Minnesota River, about eight
miles below the falls. A year later, Colonel Snelling, who had succeeded to
the command, built the fort on the bluff where it now stands, and gave it
the name of Fort St. Anthony. In 1824 General Scott suggested to the War
Department the propriety of changing the name of the fort to that of one
whose services to the country had been more conspicuous than those of
Father Hennepin's patron saint.
[Illustration TOWER AT FORT SNELLING. THE ORIGINAL "FORT" NOW USED AS A
GUARD-HOUSE.]
In 1821 the soldiers built a mill on the west side of the river, near where
now stands one of the greatest flouring mills in the world. The fort was,
of course, the centre of what life there was in the country, and its people
occasionally came into contact with the great world beyond. In 1826 the
Indian agent, Major Taliafero, officiated at the marriage of the slave,
Dred Scott, who was destined to play a part in history doubtless out of all
proportion to his expectations. Colonel Snelling's son Joseph was something
of a _littérateur_, and, after fighting a duel with a young officer, he
became involved in a more savage, although less bloody, contest with N.P.
Willis.
The land about the falls was a military reservation and therefore not open
to settlement. As early as 1837 a Swiss watchmaker by the name of Perry
attempted to settle there, but was driven off by the soldiers. Going a few
miles down the river, he became in 1838, the first settler upon the present
site of the city of St. Paul. His only competitor for this honor is a
certain one-eyed personage of evil disposition and unattractive appearance
whose true name was Parrant, but who became known to fame as Pig's Eye.
With an eye to the advantages of the liquor business, Parrant located his
claim beyond the limits of the reservation and near the river, where it
became a flourishing resort for soldiers, Indians, and other frontier
characters. It was the head of navigation on the river and entered into
competition with the neighboring village of Stillwater for the proud
position of the metropolis of the Territory. A town near by was surveyed in
1847 and during the following two years, as we are credibly informed by a
local historian, "maturative and creative influence, slowly but surely
tended towards civilization." From the same source we learn that in 1848
"the _nuclei_ of civilization" consisted of a church, a school, and a
hotel,--surely not a bad beginning. The history of the modern city properly
begins in 1848, when Minnesota was organized as a territory with St. Paul
as the provisional capital. The territorial government was organized with
Alexander Ramsey (afterwards Governor of the State, Senator, and Secretary
of War) as Governor, and duly proclaimed on June 1, 1848. The enabling act
named St. Paul as the temporary capital, but left the people free to choose
at the first general election a permanent place of government.
[Illustration ALEXANDER RAMSEY.]
In the meantime, a rival town had grown up at the east end of the Falls of
St. Anthony, and the long struggle for supremacy began with the selection
of a permanent capital. The Indian title to the lands was extinguished in
1838, but two years earlier the commandant at the fort, Major Plympton,
availed himself of his superior facilities and staked out a claim and built
a cabin near the east end of the falls. Other claims were located soon
after, all of which ultimately became the property of Franklin Steele and
Pierre Bottineau, names famous in the early history of the locality. Early
in 1847 there were about fifty people in the village, but in that year the
van of "that great army which is moving yet but never stopping" began to
arrive.
In 1848 three hundred people were on the ground, and the two towns of St.
Anthony City and St. Anthony were duly surveyed and launched upon the
market. In the same year it is interesting to find the names of Robert
Rantoul and Caleb Cushing, famous statesmen of the day, among the
purchasers of a nine-tenths interest in the east-side water power. During
this year both the villages of St. Anthony and St. Paul were thriving under
the impulse given by the organization of a regular government. St. Anthony
now obtained a post-office, established a library association with two
hundred books on its shelves, and indulged in a lecture course by local
talent. St. Paul became the capital, but the controversy was not finally
settled until 1872, when a compromise was effected by the permanent
location of the State University at Minneapolis. The growth of the two
villages during the next decade was very rapid. In 1855 Laurence Oliphant,
diplomat and traveller, came down the river in a canoe and wrote
interesting descriptions of St. Anthony and St. Paul and uncomplimentary
notices of the people to _Blackwood's Magazine_. He was charmed with the
falls and the "comfortable, civilized aspect of the town," which was then
becoming known as a "watering place." Hotel manners in the capital city
were not satisfactory, but the opinions of England and the Crimean War
expressed by prominent citizens in the free and easy vernacular of the
frontier made good reading.
In the meantime another village had grown up on the west side of the falls.
In 1849 the old government mill, the little house a few yards back and two
cabins built by missionaries on the banks of Lake Calhoun were the only
buildings on the west side of the river. In that year Robert Smith, a
member of Congress from Illinois, through some means best known to himself,
obtained from the War Department the privilege of purchasing the mill and
the house and of making a claim to 160 acres of land. This tract was
carefully selected for the purpose of including the valuable waterpower
rights on the west side. In the same year John H. Stevens, then postmaster
at the fort, also obtained a permit and entered a claim to the land now
covered by the heart of the city. While Smith and Stevens were favored
others were driven from the reservation by the soldiers. Stevens built the
first frame house in Minneapolis, and it now stands in one of the beautiful
parks of the city as an evidence of the antiquity of things. Legal titles
could not be obtained on the west side until 1855, although by that time
more than two hundred houses had been built. In the following year the city
was incorporated, but in 1862 this form of government was abandoned, and
the people lived under a simple township organization until 1867. Five
years later, in 1872, the two cities of St. Anthony and Minneapolis were
consolidated under the name of the City of Minneapolis, which then entered
upon a period of phenomenal growth.
[Illustration COURT HOUSE AND CITY HALL, MINNEAPOLIS.]
We now find two cities in the stress of a rivalry which continued for many
years. The west line of St. Paul soon became the east line of Minneapolis.
The existence of two cities so near together was, as we have seen, due not
to deliberate choice but to circumstances. In early days the fall, with its
abundant waterpower and attractive scenery, was the point about which the
minds of people revolved; it was, however, on the military reservation
acquired by Pike, and settlers were driven to find a foothold farther down
the river but within reach of the fort. There were some difficulties in the
way of navigation to the falls, but these would soon have been removed. St.
Paul was the capital of the State, and thus became the political and
professional centre. In the contest for political honors this supremacy is
still maintained. Its leaders control the politics of the State. Governors
and senators are created in St. Paul and not in Minneapolis. The business
enterprise of St. Paul found vent in building up great wholesale houses and
in the development of railway and general transportation enterprises.
Minneapolis, by reason of its location, became a great manufacturing
centre. The vast pine forests of the north sent millions of logs to its
mills. Around the falls were built the greatest flouring mills in the
world, and its location upon the eastern edge of the great prairies of
Minnesota and Dakota soon made it the primary wheat market of the world.
The commercial and business interests of the two cities thus for a number
of years developed along different and clearly defined lines. The increase
of population is shown by the following table:
Year. St. Paul. Minneapolis. St. Anthony.
1850 1,083 .... 538
1860 10,401 2,564 3,285
1870 20,030 13,066 5,013
1880 41,473 46,887 ....
1890 133,156 164,738 ....
1900 163,632 202,781 ....
The falls was the point at which the early thought and life of Minneapolis
centred, and the foundation of its early business prosperity. Paul Bourget,
in his _Outre Mer_, speaking of the reasons for the location of American
cities, says, "If any feature such as a waterfall permitted factories,
industries were established. Minneapolis had no other origin. The falls of
the Mississippi lent themselves to a series of incomparable mills and this
was the starting-point of one of the future capitals of the world." When
the Government established a fort it took the name of the falls, and the
first town-sites were only distinguishable from each other by the
difference between St. Anthony and St. Anthony City.
[Illustration FALLS OF ST. ANTHONY, DURING HIGH WATER.]
When it was rumored that the waterpower was about to be destroyed,
consternation rested upon the little community. In 1868 the historian
Parkman had written:
"Great changes, however, have taken place here and are still in
progress. The rock is a very soft and friable sandstone,
overlaid by a stratum of limestone; and it is crumbling with
such rapidity under the action of the water that the cataract
will soon be little more than a rapid.[13] Other changes
equally disastrous in the artistic point of view are going on
even more quickly. Beside the falls stands a city which by an
ingenious combination of Greek and Sioux languages received
the name of Minneapolis, the City of the Water, and which in
1867 contained ten thousand inhabitants, two national banks,
and an opera house, while its rival city of St. Anthony,
immediately opposite, boasts a gigantic water cure and the
State University. In short, the great natural beauty of the
place is utterly spoiled."
Minneapolis is essentially a manufacturing city. For many years the
principal industry was the manufacture of lumber, which in its various
forms has now reached great magnitude. The annual output for the five years
prior to 1850 was 1,500,000 feet a year. In 1870 it reached 118,500,000
feet a year; in 1880 it was 195,500,000; in 1890, 300,000,000; in 1900 more
than 500,000,000, and in addition 57,000,000 shingles and 94,000,000 laths.
An army of men is engaged in the work of cutting the logs on the timber
lands of the north. These are driven or floated down the river to the booms
near the mills which line the river in the northern part of the city.
[Illustration THE MILLING DISTRICT.]
The prominence of the city in flour-milling is due to its location and to
the skill and ingenuity of the men who have been engaged in the business.
Minneapolis has passed through three well-defined milling periods. Prior to
1870 the ancient process of grinding wheat between the upper and nether
millstones was in use, which turned into middlings much of the precious
gluten. In 1872 an emigrant French miller named Legroux devised an
apparatus for purifying middlings, and as a result the product became
famous as "Minnesota Patent Flour," and brought pre-eminence and wealth to
the Minnesota millers. A practical monopoly existed until the Eastern
millers discovered that the process could be as well applied to the winter
wheat of Minnesota as to the spring. Then began a new struggle for
pre-eminence. After searching through the world, the Minneapolis millers
discovered in Hungary a process of milling hard wheat which finally
disposed of the ancient millstone and carried the wheat between rolls of
smooth and corrugated surface until, by a process of gradual reduction, the
desired fineness was secured. Foremost in the work of developing this great
industry was the late Charles A. Pillsbury, to whose enterprise the city
is greatly indebted.
At the present time the Minneapolis mills can produce 76,366 barrels of
flour a day, which is the largest daily capacity of any group of mills in
the world. The flour export for 1900 was 4,702,485 barrels. Thus the mills
of Minneapolis, if grinding steadily, could give a loaf of bread every day
to every man, woman, and child in the States of Ohio, Pennsylvania, New
York, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Vermont, New Hampshire, and
Maine.
[Illustration PUBLIC LIBRARY, MINNEAPOLIS.]
The conditions in a new and rapidly growing city cannot be properly
understood without careful consideration of such material facts as we have
been considering. But there is yet another story to tell. It is doubtful
whether any cities in the United States of the size contain so many
beautiful pictures and fine libraries. The Minneapolis Public Library is
well known to all interested in library management by reason of the
liberality and novelty of its methods. In the spring of 1859 Bayard Taylor
delivered a lecture in the village and gave the proceeds, less than one
hundred dollars, to a library association, which took the name of the
Minneapolis Atheneum. Later Dr. Kirby Spencer devised to it a fund which
now yields about $8000 each year, for the purchase of books of a certain
designated class and character. The Atheneum was not a public library, but
it was liberally managed by the trustees and the community was enabled to
use it under reasonable restrictions. The trustees finally took the lead in
the establishment of a public library into which the collection of the
Atheneum was merged. The law created a library board with limited powers of
taxation. Public-spirited citizens contributed a valuable site on which
there was erected a building not surpassed by any structure of its kind in
the country for convenience and general efficiency. In addition to the
central building, there are two branch buildings, one erected by the city
and the other presented to the city by ex-Governor John S. Pillsbury, who
had already made his name synonymous with public generosity by his liberal
gifts to the State University. The first librarian was Herbert Putnam,
afterwards of the Boston Public Library, and now the Librarian of the
Congressional Library at Washington. His successor, an eminent scholar, Dr.
James K. Hosmer, has continued building upon the foundation laid by Mr.
Putnam. The system gives to the public a much greater liberty of access to
the books than had been considered safe and desirable in other large
libraries. The plan has been successful and there have been no losses or
injuries to the books which would justify the withdrawal or restriction of
such freedom. The library now contains 113,000 books, and during the past
year the circulation was over 600,000, which was an average of three books
for each inhabitant of the city.
[Illustration OLE BULL MONUMENT IN LORING PARK.]
The picture gallery and school of the Minneapolis Society of Fine Arts
occupies the third floor of the Library Building. The city owns a number
of good paintings, which it purchased at the sale of the gallery that
formerly belonged to the Exposition Company. Several fine paintings have
been presented to the municipality by Mr. J.J. Hill of St. Paul, whose
wealth has also been used to advance and cultivate the taste for artistic
work in the city of St. Paul. When the collection of casts selected by
General Cesnola for the Metropolitan Museum of Art arrived in New York
before the building was ready, it was promptly purchased by citizens of
Minneapolis, and donated to the Exposition Company, which was then holding
annual exhibits. It is now the property of Mr. T.B. Janney, by whom it has
been placed in the Public Library, and thus for all practical purposes
dedicated to the art education of the people. Mr. Hill in St. Paul and Mr.
T.B. Walker in Minneapolis have private collections which include many
famous and valuable pictures.
A start has been made in the work of beautifying the city and honoring
illustrious citizens by the placing of Fjelde's statue of Ole Bull in
Loring Park and Daniel C. French's statue of ex-Governor John S. Pillsbury
in the grounds of the State University. A law has recently been passed
which provides for the creation of permanent art commissions in St. Paul
and Minneapolis. It is hoped that these bodies will prevent the purchase or
acceptance of unworthy pictures or statues by the municipalities.
In proportion to the population the parks in Minneapolis exceed in acreage
those of any other city in America and of all but three foreign cities.
There are twenty-two parks and parkways, not counting numerous parklets
formed by the intersection of streets. At the present time the park board
controls 1552.81 acres. In the centre of the city lies Loring Park, with
its beautiful lake and well-kept verdure. Starting from this point, Kenwood
Boulevard carries us along a wooded bluffy region from whose heights are
obtained changing views of the Lake of the Isles, which is now entirely
enclosed by a boulevard. A short half-mile south is Lake Calhoun, along the
eastern terrace of which we pass to the borders of Lakewood Cemetery and
thence through Interlaken, rich in the beauty of its wild woods, to the
shores of Lake Harriet and its pavilion. At the south angle of the lake the
boulevard leads off to Minnehaha Creek, which is the outlet of Lake
Minnetonka and flows easterly through a romantic valley until, falling over
the Trenton limestone within a half-mile of the Mississippi, it forms the
romantic Falls of Minnehaha. Around the Falls of Minnehaha there is a park
of one hundred and twenty-five acres, containing a zoological garden and
bordered by the grounds of the Soldiers' Home, which for all æsthetic
purposes is a part of it.
[Illustration LORING PARK--MINNEAPOLIS.]
Another matter of striking interest is the bicycle-path system, which
crosses the city in every direction and extends for miles into the country.
The paths are constructed and sustained by a license tax of fifty cents on
each wheel which uses them. During the past year this tax produced more
than $20,000, all of which was expended in the construction and maintenance
of the paths.
[Illustration THE FALLS OF MINNEHAHA.]
The State University is the crowning feature of the non-commercial
institutions of the city and State. The first class was graduated in 1873,
and ten years thereafter the graduating class numbered thirty-five. Its
great weakness, as of all Western institutions, was the lack of proper
preparatory schools, and President Folwell devised a unique plan by which
the State high schools became feeders for the University. There are now
about 3500 students in the University, making it the second or third
largest in size in the United States. Upon the foundation broadly laid by
the first president of the institution, President Northrup has since 1884
builded until the institution now has a magnificent income and an
equipment second to few in the country.
Another notable feature in connection with the local government in
Minneapolis is her method in dealing with the liquor question. After a
period of controversy an ordinance was passed under which a line was drawn
around the downtown district. Within this patrol limit saloons can exist
upon the payment of a license fee of $1000 a year. As a result, the
residence part of the city is entirely free from the demoralizing influence
of the saloon.
In a general way the difference in population expresses the present
relation between the two cities in other respects. In appearance St. Paul
is more metropolitan than Minneapolis, as it is more compactly built. St.
Paul lies along the side of a steep bluff. It is rugged and diverse and has
the narrow streets and crowded appearance of a large city. From the crest
of the hills, many magnificent residences look down upon the river.
Westwardly the city straggles over the rolling country until it reaches the
Minneapolis line, enclosing in the meantime the State Fair Grounds and
centres of population which were originally separate municipalities, such
as St. Anthony Park, Merriam Park, and Hamline. Minneapolis is built upon
an almost level plain, lying between the river and Lake Calhoun, broken
toward the north by a line of high ground parallel with and a mile west of
the river. Its streets are broad and the houses set well back in ample
grounds. Enclosed grounds are the exception. In St. Paul the fashionable
residences are largely concentrated upon the crest of the bluff, while in
Minneapolis they are scattered in various localities. There is also a
general lack of concentration in the business districts of Minneapolis,
which does not exist in St. Paul.