Development Part 2: Walking City

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

2. 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.

3. 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.

4. 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.

5. 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 real-estate 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.

6. 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.

7. 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.

8. 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.

9. 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.

10. 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.

11. 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.