Father Hennepin was the first white man who penetrated the wilds of
Minnesota, and in 1680 he discovered the great falls of the
Mississippi River, to which he gave the name of his patron saint,
Anthony of Padua. The river just below the falls naturally attracted
the attention of the French adventurers who came to trade with the
Sioux, Chippewas and Dakotas, and the first white man who tarried and
built a house here was a Canadian voyageur, who came in 1838. In 1841
a French priest established the Roman Catholic mission of St. Paul on
the bank of the river, and thus the settlement was named. The
admirable water-power of the falls, which, with their two miles of
rapids, descend seventy-eight feet, afterwards attracted the attention
of millers, lumbermen and other manufacturers, and this made the
settlement of Minneapolis, ten miles westward and farther up the
river, which began in 1849, the name meaning the "city of the waters."
St. Paul grew with rapidity, being encouraged both by steamboat and
afterwards by railway traffic; but Minneapolis, though started later,
subsequently outstripped it. The two places, rivals yet friends, have
extended towards each other, so as to almost form one large city, and
they now have over four hundred thousand inhabitants. These "Twin
Cities" are running a rapid race in prosperity, each independently of
the other. St. Paul is rather more of a trading city, while
Minneapolis is an emporium of sawmills and the greatest flour-mills in
the world. Both are admirably located upon the bluffs rising above the
Mississippi. St. Paul is situated upon a series of ornamental
semicircular terraces that are very attractive, though in some
portions rather circumscribed. Minneapolis is built on a more
extensive plan upon an esplanade overlooking the falls, and extending
to an island in midstream, and also over upon the opposite northern
side of the river. The Falls of St. Anthony is the most powerful
waterfall in the United States wholly applied to manufacturing
purposes. The entire current of the Mississippi comes down the rapids
and over the falls, the latter having a descent of about fifty feet.
It is protected by a wall built by the Government across the river, to
prevent the wearing away of the sandstone formation, there having been
serious inroads made, while the surface is covered with an apron of
planks over which the water runs, with sluiceways alongside to shoot
logs down. However much Father Hennepin may have admired the beauties
of this great cataract, there is no longer anything picturesque about
the Falls of St. Anthony. Logs jam the upper river, where the booms
catch them for the sawmills, and subterranean channels conduct the
water in various directions to the mills, and discharge their foaming
streams below. There is no romance in the rumble of flour-rollers and
the buzz of saws, but they mean a great deal of profitable business.
The force exerted by the falls at low water is estimated at one
hundred and thirty-five thousand horse-power.
St. Paul is the capital of Minnesota, and the State is building a
magnificent new Capitol, constructed of granite and marble, with a
lofty central dome, at a cost exceeding $2,000,000. There is a fine
City Hall and many imposing and substantial business edifices. Its
especial residence street, Summit Avenue, is upon a high ridge,
parallel with and some distance back from the Mississippi, the chief
dwelling, a large brownstone mansion, being the home of the leading
railroad prince of the Northwest, President James J. Hill of the Great
Northern Railroad. Here is also the new and spacious Roman Catholic
Seminary of St. Thomas Aquinas. The old military post of Fort Snelling
is on the river above St. Paul, near the mouth of Minnesota River. In
Minneapolis, the great building is the City Hall, completed in 1896,
and having a tower rising three hundred and fifty feet, giving a
superb view. The Guaranty Loan Company's Building is one of the finest
office structures in America, with its roof arranged for a garden,
where concerts are given. Minneapolis has a widely extended
residential section, with hundreds of attractive mansions in
ornamental grounds. Near the river bank is the University of
Minnesota, having well-equipped buildings and attended by twenty-eight
hundred students.
Minneapolis is the greatest flour manufacturing city in the world. Its
mills, of which there are some twenty-five, are located along the
river near the falls, and have a daily capacity of over sixty
thousand barrels, turning out about eighteen millions of barrels
annually, which are sent all over the globe. The whole country west
and northwest of Minneapolis, including the Red River Valley, the
Dakotas and Manitoba, is practically a fertile wheat field, growing
the finest grain that is produced in America, and this makes the
prosperity of the city. The Pillsbury-Washburn Flour Mills Company are
the leading millers. The great Pillsbury A mill, which turns out ten
thousand seven hundred barrels a day, is the world's champion
flour-mill. It is a marvel of the economical manufacture, the railway
cars coming in laden with wheat, being quickly emptied, and then
filled with loaded flour-barrels and sacks for shipment. Machinery
does practically everything from the shovelling of wheat out of the
car to the packing of the barrel or sack with the product. This huge
mill stands in relation to the flour trade as Niagara does to
waterfalls. The other great Minneapolis industry is the lumber trade.
Minnesota is well timbered, a belt of fine forests, chiefly pine,
stretching across it, known as the _Coteau des Bois_, or "Big Woods,"
an elevated plateau with a rolling surface, having thousands of lakes
scattered through it, fed by springs, while their outlets go into
streams feeding the Mississippi, down which the logs are floated to
the booms above the falls. The extensive sawmills will cut over four
hundred and fifty millions of feet of lumber in a year. Thus the flour
and lumber have become the chief articles of export from Minneapolis.
There are several pleasant lakes in the neighborhood, which are
popular resorts of the people of the "Twin Cities," the largest and
most famous being Minnetonka, the Indian name meaning the "Big Water."
It is a pretty lake, at nearly a thousand feet elevation, with low,
winding and tree-clad shores, having little islets dotted over its
surface, and myriads of indented bays and jutting peninsulas which
extend its shore line to over a hundred miles, though the extreme
length of the lake is barely seventeen miles. There are many
attractive places on the shores and islands, and large steamers ply on
its bosom. From this lake the discharge is through the Minnehaha
River, and its Minnehaha Falls, the "Laughing Water," poetically
praised by Longfellow in Hiawatha. The beautiful glen in which this
graceful cataract is found has been made a park. The falls are about
fifty feet high, and a critical observer has recorded that there is
"only wanting a little more water to be one of the most picturesque
cascades in the country." Below the Minnehaha Falls is another on a
smaller scale, which the people thereabout have nicknamed the
"Minnegiggle." Thus sings Longfellow of Minnehaha:
"Homeward now went Hiawatha;
Only once his pace he slackened,
Only once he paused or halted,
Paused to purchase heads of arrows
Of the ancient Arrow-maker,
In the land of the Dacotahs,
Where the Falls of Minnehaha
Flash and gleam among the oak-trees,
Laugh and leap into the valley.
"There the ancient Arrow-maker
Made his arrow-heads of sandstone,
Arrow-heads of chalcedony,
Arrow-heads of flint and jasper,
Smoothed and sharpened at the edges,
Hard and polished, keen and costly.
"With him dwelt his dark-eyed daughter,
Wayward as the Minnehaha,
With her moods of shade and sunshine,
Eyes that smiled and frowned alternate,
Feet as rapid as the river,
Tresses flowing like the water,
And as musical a laughter;
And he named her from the river,
From the water-fall he named her,
Minnehaha, Laughing Water.
"Was it then for heads of arrows,
Arrow-heads of chalcedony,
Arrow-heads of flint and jasper,
That my Hiawatha halted
In the land of the Dacotahs?
"Was it not to see the maiden,
See the face of Laughing Water,
Peeping from behind the curtain,
Hear the rustling of her garments,
From behind the waving curtain,
As one sees the Minnehaha
Gleaming, glancing through the branches,
As one hears the Laughing Water,
From behind its screen of branches?
"Who shall say what thoughts and visions
Fill the fiery brains of young men?
Who shall say what dreams of beauty
Filled the heart of Hiawatha?
All he told to old Nokomis,
When he reached the lodge at sunset,
Was the meeting with his father,
Was his fight with Mudjekeewis;
Not a word he said of arrows,
Not a word of Laughing Water."