Minneapolis is the largest city by population in the U.S. state of Minnesota, and the county seat of Hennepin County. The origin and growth of the city was spurred by the proximity of Fort Snelling, the first major United States military presence in the area, and by its location on Saint Anthony Falls, which provided power for sawmills and flour mills.
Construction of Fort Snelling began in 1819, near the confluence of the Mississippi and Minnesota rivers. A lumber mill and a grist mill were built at Saint Anthony Falls in 1822 to supply the fort. Saint Anthony was established on the east bank in the 1840s, while Minneapolis developed on the west bank later; Minneapolis was incorporated as a city in 1866. The two towns later merged into one city in 1872.
Early development focused on sawmills, but flour mills eventually became the dominant industry. The growth of the milling industry contributed to the expansion of transportation, banking, and commercial institutions, including the Minneapolis Grain Exchange. Through innovations in milling and the growth of its flour-milling industry, Minneapolis became a leading center of flour production and became known as the "Mill City". As the city grew, its cultural institutions developed alongside the University of Minnesota and a renowned park system shaped by figures including Horace Cleveland and, later, Theodore Wirth.
Although the sawmills and the flour mills are long gone, Minneapolis remains a regional center in banking and industry. The two largest milling companies, General Mills and the Pillsbury Company, now merged under the General Mills name, still remain prominent in the Twin Cities area. The city has rediscovered the riverfront, which now hosts parkland, the Mill City Museum, and the Guthrie Theater.
Early European exploration Minneapolis grew up around Saint Anthony Falls, the only waterfall on the Mississippi River and the end of the commercially navigable section of the river until locks were installed in the 1960s.
French explorer Daniel Greysolon, Sieur du Lhut explored the Minnesota area in 1680 on a mission to extend French dominance over the area. While exploring the St. Croix River area, he got word that some other explorers had been held captive. He arranged for their release. The prisoners included Michel Aco, Antoine Auguelle, and Father Louis Hennepin, a Catholic priest and missionary. On that expedition, Father Hennepin explored the falls and named them after his patron saint, Anthony of Padua. He published a book in 1683 entitled Description of Louisiana, describing the area to interested Europeans. As time went on, he developed a tendency to exaggerate. A 1691 edition of the book described the falls as having a drop of fifty or sixty feet, when they only had a drop of . Hennepin may have been including nearby rapids in his estimate, as the current total drop in river level over the series of dams is .
United States' acquisition The city's land was acquired by the United States in a series of treaties and purchases negotiated with the Mdewakanton band of the Dakota and separately with European nations. England claimed the land east of the Mississippi and France, then Spain, and again France claimed the land west of the river. In 1787 land on the east side of the river became part of the Northwest Territory and in 1803 the west side became part of the Louisiana Purchase, both claimed by the United States. In 1805, Zebulon Pike purchased two tracts of land from the Dakota Indians. One tract was located at the mouth of the St. Croix River, while a second, larger tract ran from the confluence of the Minnesota and Mississippi Rivers to St. Anthony Falls, with a width of east and west of the river. In return, he distributed about $200 in trading goods and sixty gallons of liquor, and promised a further payment from the United States government. The United States Senate eventually approved a payment of $2,000.
Fort Snelling and St. Anthony Falls
Founding of Fort Snelling Fort Snelling was established in 1819 to extend United States jurisdiction over the area and to allay concerns about British fur traders in the area. The soldiers initially camped at a site on the south side of the Minnesota River, but conditions were hard there and nearly a fifth of the soldiers died of scurvy in the winter of 1819–1820. They later moved their camp to Camp Coldwater in May 1820. Much of the military's activity was conducted there while the fort was built. Camp Coldwater, the site of a cold, clear, flowing spring, was also considered sacred by the native Dakota.
The soldiers needed to supply the fort, so they built roads and planted vegetables, wheat, and hay, and raised cattle. They also made the first weather recordings in the area. A lumber mill and a grist mill were built on the falls in 1822 to supply the fort.
Enclosures east of the Mississippi
A settlement on the east bank of the Mississippi near St. Anthony Falls was envisioned in the 1830s by Joseph Plympton, who became commander of Fort Snelling in 1837. He made a more accurate survey of the reservation lands and transmitted a map to the War Department delimiting about within the reservation. He cleverly drew the boundary line to exclude certain parts of the east bank that had been part of the 1805 cession to Zebulon Pike. His plan was to stake a pre-emption claim at the falls. However, Franklin Steele also had plans to stake a claim.
On July 15, 1838, word reached Fort Snelling that a treaty between the United States and the Dakota and Ojibwa had been ratified, ceding land between the St. Croix River and the Mississippi Rivers. Steele rushed off to the falls, built a shanty, and marked off boundary lines. Plympton's party arrived the next morning, but they were too late to claim the most desirable land. Plympton claimed some less desirable land near Steele's claim, as did other settlers such as Pierre Bottineau, Joseph Rondo, Samuel Findley, and Baptiste Turpin. Steele went on to build a dam at the falls and built a sawmill that cut logs from the Rum River area.
West of St. Anthony Falls The Dakota were hunters and gatherers and soon found themselves in debt to fur traders. Pressed by a whooping cough outbreak, loss of buffalo, deer, and bear, and loss of forests to logging, in 1851 in the Treaty of Traverse des Sioux, the Mdewakanton sold the remaining land west of the river, allowing settlement in 1852.
Franklin Steele also had a clever plan to obtain land on the west side of the falls. He suggested to his associated Colonel John H. Stevens that he should bargain with the War Department to obtain some land. Stevens agreed to operate a ferry service across the Mississippi in exchange for a claim of just above the government mills. The government approved this bargain, and Stevens built his house in the winter of 1849–1850. The house was the first permanent dwelling on the west bank in the area that became Minneapolis.
A few years later, the amount of land controlled by the fort was reduced with an order from U.S. President Millard Fillmore, and rapid settlement followed. The village of Minneapolis soon sprung up on the southwest bank of the river.
City pioneers
St. Anthony After Franklin Steele obtained proper title to his land, he turned his energies to building a sawmill at St. Anthony Falls. He obtained financing and built a dam on the east channel of the river between Hennepin Island and Nicollet Island, along with a sawmill equipped with two up-and-down saws. His partner Daniel Stanchfield, a lumberman who had moved to Minnesota, dispatched crews up the Mississippi River to begin cutting lumber. The sawmill began cutting lumber in September 1848. In October 1848, Steele enlisted Ard Godfrey to supervise the mill at a salary of $1500 per year. Steele platted a townsite in 1849 and gave it the name "St. Anthony". The town quickly grew with workers. In addition to the first sawmill and several others that followed, a grist mill was built in 1851. By 1855, the town had approximately 3000 people, and it was incorporated as a city. Godfrey's house, built in 1848, was purchased by the Hennepin County Territorial Pioneers' Association and moved to Chute Square. The house was surveyed in 1934 by the Historic American Buildings Survey.
Minneapolis
On the west side of the river, John H. Stevens platted a townsite in 1854. He laid out Washington Avenue parallel to the river, with other streets running parallel to and perpendicular to Washington. He later questioned his decision, thinking he should have run the streets directly east–west and north–south, but it ended up aligning nicely with the plat of St. Anthony. The wide, straight streets, with Washington and Hennepin Avenue being wide and the others being wide, contrasted with Saint Paul's streets that were wide.
Name of Minneapolis Before its incorporation, the city was known by several different names. The Dakota name for Minneapolis is Bdeóta Othúŋwe ('Many Lakes City'). The St. Paul Pioneer dubbed it facetiously "All Saints" anticipating that the town might absorb its neighbors St. Paul and St. Anthony. First west-bank settler John H. Stevens preferred "Hennepin" for the town and "Snelling" for the county. It was called "Lowell" for its water features, "Addiesville" or "Adasville" for a daughter of settler Charles Hoag, "Winona" by those who wished to preserve indigenous language, and "Brooklyn". "Albion" was recorded by the newly organized county government but a majority of residents rejected that name. The city's first schoolmaster, Hoag was searching for indigenous syllables, when he stumbled on "Indianapolis" and was led by the twenty four small lakes that are now within the city limits.
In the St. Anthony Express, Hoag proposed "Minnehapolis," with a silent h, to combine the Dakota word for waterfall, Mníȟaȟa, and the Greek word for city, . Express editor George Bowman and Daniel Payne dropped the h, leaving out the hah, to create Minneapolis, meaning 'city of the falls'.
Urban status The Minnesota Territorial Legislature recognized Saint Anthony as a town in 1855 and Minneapolis in 1856. Boundaries were changed and Minneapolis was incorporated as a city in 1867. Minneapolis and Saint Anthony joined in 1872. Minneapolis changed more than 100 road names in 1873, including deduplication of names between it and the former Saint Anthony.
Transportation
Hennepin Avenue Bridge The Hennepin Avenue Bridge, a suspension bridge that was the first bridge built over the full width of the Mississippi River, was built in 1854 and dedicated on January 23, 1855. The bridge had a span of , a roadway of , and was built at a cost of $36,000. The toll was five cents for pedestrians and twenty-five cents for horsedrawn wagons.
Rail transportation The early settlers of Minnesota were anxiously seeking railroad transportation, but insufficient capital was available after the Panic of 1857. Rails were finally built in Minnesota in 1862, when the St. Paul and Pacific Railroad built its first of track from the Phalen Creek area in St. Paul to a stop just short of St. Anthony Falls. The railroad continued building track from Minneapolis to Elk River in 1864 and to St. Cloud in 1866, and from Minneapolis west to Howard Lake in 1867 and Willmar in 1869.
Meanwhile, the Minnesota Central, an early predecessor of the Milwaukee Road, built a line from Minneapolis to Fort Snelling in 1865. The railroad gradually extended to Faribault, Owatonna, and Austin. It crossed the Iowa border and met up with the McGregor & Western line. This connection gave Minneapolis rail service to Milwaukee via Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin, with through service beginning on October 14, 1867.