|
History of the
Minneapolis Riverfront District and vicinity
Early settlement, the Minnesota Territory, and statehood
Minnesota had a long history before it became a part of the United States.
Its first inhabitants probably came to the region at least 10,000 years
ago. These Native Americans lived on the land and enjoyed its bounties
for thousands of years. From the 1600s onward, they were joined by European
fur traders, missionaries, and adventurers. Starting in 1671, European
colonial powers laid claim to the land around St. Anthony Falls; first
the French, then the Spanish, and then the English took possession of
the area through a series of treaties. In 1783, England recognized American
sovereignty over the lands east of the Mississippi. The area west of
the Mississippi came into American ownership in 1803 through the Louisiana
Purchase.
In 1805, the U. S. government, eager to learn more about its new lands,
sent Lieutenant Zebulon Pike to explore its northern regions. He met
with Dakota leaders and secured a treaty ceding to the government lands
at the mouths of the Minnesota and St. Croix rivers, including land
on both sides of the Mississippi up to St. Anthony Falls. American interest
in the area remained dormant until after the War of 1812, when Washington
embarked on the creation of new outposts in its western territories.
It was not until 1819 that the government established its first presence
in Minnesota through the construction of Fort Snelling at the confluence
of the Mississippi and Minnesota rivers. Shortly thereafter, the Fort
Snelling garrison took advantage of the waterpower of the Falls, ten
miles upriver, with the construction of a waterpowered sawmill in 1821
and a grist (flour) mill in 1823. These were the first structures built
by European-Americans around the Falls and marked the start of exploitation
of the Falls as a source of power. |
|
|
Franklin Steele ca. 1856 |
Officially-sanctioned
settlement around the Falls remained limited for the ensuing two
decades, as the land remained under the control of Fort Snelling
and off-limits to private ownership. By the late 1830s, though,
over 150 squatters, including farmers, fur traders, and whiskey-sellers,
had established unofficial claims near the Fort. Fort Snelling commander
Joseph Plympton saw in this a tempting business opportunity and,
in 1838, received permission from Washington to redraw the boundaries
of the reservation to exclude lands on the east bank near the Falls,
thus opening them for sale to private parties. His own entrepreneurial
ambitions were thwarted by a canny move by the young |
settler Franklin Steele, who
staked a pre-emptive claim on the east bank even before the land was officially
opened to settlement. When Plympton’s men arrived to stake his claim,
they found Steele already in possession of the choicest plots near the
Falls. Steele would remain a powerful force in the development of the
towns of St. Anthony and Minneapolis over the next several decades. Land
on the west side of the river around St. Anthony Falls did not become
available to private claimants until 1855, although squatters had been
present there well before that. |
|
|
|
| |
 |
Much of this maneuvering
for land ownership took place even before Minnesota became a territory.
In 1849, when the Minnesota Territory was created, fewer than 5,000
white people inhabited an area which extended far to the west and
south of today’s state boundaries. The first territorial census,
taken in 1850,
recorded 6,000 settlers in the Territory’s nine counties.
The census did not record the approximately 31,700 Native Americans
who were Minnesota's |
first inhabitants--and made
up 84 percent of the population in 1850. The non-Indian population grew
rapidly over the next decade. Just two years after Minnesota became a
state in 1858, the white population reached 172,000.
|
|
| |
|
| |
1854/55:
First bridge over the Mississippi River
Two separate communities shared the resources of the Falls. St. Anthony,
the slightly older town on the east side of the Mississippi, was first
settled by the early entrepreneur Franklin Steele in 1838, platted in
1849 (when its population was already well over 600), and incorporated
in 1855. The younger community on
the west side of the river took the name Minneapolis,
which combined a part
 |
of a Dakota Indian for "Laughing Waters" with a Greek
word--polis--which meant city. Minneapolis was incorporated in 1856,
just after Fort Snelling relinquished control of lands on the west
bank of the Falls. Both towns grew quickly and developed a number
of industries at the falls. The earliest waterpowered facilities
were sawmills; |
shortly thereafter, enterprising
business people constructed grist and flour mills along the river. Flour
mills ground wheat into flour with giant stones powered by water. Grist
mills used the same means to turn a variety of grains, like corn and barley,
into a fine "grist," or powder. St. Anthony and Minneapolis
were rivals through most of these years, each trying to outdo the other
in developing the resources of the Falls.
For the first several years,
cross-river transportation between the two fledgling settlements was
primitive and tenuous, depending on a rope-drawn private ferry service,
or, in winter, crossing on foot across the frozen river. The most intrepid
might pick their way between the east bank and Nicollet Island on the
floating log booms that often jammed the channel. In 1852, Franklin
Steele anticipated that the area’s population would soon grow
beyond the capacity of these facilities, and he formed a company to
capitalize on the expected demand. In 1854, this company built a 620-foot-long
suspension bridge near the site of the old ferry, linking the west bank
to Nicollet Island. The bridge, with its characteristic shingled wood
towers, was opened with much civic pride in January 1855. Together with
a shorter bridge Steele had built in 1853 to span the east channel,
this was the first permanent bridge to span the Mississippi at any point
along its length. Both as a symbol and an actual means of travel, it
helped link the two cities, which merged in 1872 and took the name Minneapolis.
More information on the first suspension
bridge
|
|
| |
|
| |
|
| |
|
|
|
|
