Development Part 2: Walking City

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Development Part 2 Walking City
Geography of the Twin Cities

• David A. Lanegran
• Geography Department
• Macalester College

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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.