Rivertown: Two Trips to the Twin Cities

During a four-year period that began—gulp—three decades ago, I lived in Minneapolis. Or, as a displaced city kid, so I liked to tell myself at times. My bucolic college town of 10,000 was a short jaunt away, and I loved the combination of what felt like a classic collegiate setting with the easy access to a metropolitan area.

And Minneapolis was a city that worked. Freeway noises were cordoned out of neighborhoods by large, patterned and attractive concrete or wooden walls. The bitter cold winds of the plains could be avoided by the indoor, glass walled Skyway that connected the downtown buildings, keeping one's need for exposure confined to one entrance and exit per trip. Everyone was cheerful, polite, and (largely) Scandinavian, and addicted to hockey in a way that even as Red Wings fan I could hardly imagine. Home of the populist Democratic-Farmer Labor party, it seemed permanently cast in blue, sending favorite sons Humphrey and Mondale on to national prominence, but never quite to the White House.

Things still seem to work. But even back then, things were changing. The blue faded more than a little in 1980, as the state elected a slew of Republicans to offset its status as one of the six states carried by Carter that year. Not long after, a new influx of immigrants began, first with the Hmong people of Laos, who continue to flock to the Twin Cities. Following the outbreak of the Somalian civil war in 1991, Minneapolis-St. Paul also became ‘the defacto capital of the American Somali community’. Both the Somali and Hmong communities approach or exceed 50,000. Twin Cities residents now complain that their ethnically diverse city is still perceived as ‘Lutheran land’ beyond the state’s borders—‘and Garrison Keillor isn’t helping’, as someone said at lunch.

The new residents have only added to a diversity that’s been present for some time, giving the Twin Cities a growing cosmopolitan feel that parallels the evolution of the downtown skyline. Thirty years ago, the Mary Tyler Moore-era skyline featured one skyscraper—the IDS Tower—in downtown Minneapolis, prompting the one nearly risqué joke in which residents indulged themselves, comparing the city’s silhouette to a certain obscene gesture involving the middle finger. Today, the Tower (given the wave of corporate takeovers, I assume it now has a new name) is lost among a slew of newer and sometimes spectacular buildings.

Quick Tips:

I made two summer trips here, for business and for family fun. Both included a show at the new Guthrie Theatre, where I was privileged to see my brother on opening night in his Guthie debut. I explored the new Guthrie and surrounding riverfront on a sunny June afternoon, a beautiful reminder of what summer can be in a northern climate. During my college days, this area seemed the city’s lone concession to America’s tree-like pattern of urban development—letting the center die as new layers emerge on the outside. The riverbanks were a patchwork of abandoned and damaged mill and waterworks, flour silos, and decaying construction. The river was responsible for Minneapolis, but the city had moved on, leaving its origin in ruins.

Not any more. In an unusual combination of reclamation and celebration of that abandonment, this part of Minneapolis now appears to be the center of the city’s current development. It was the falls and their waterpower gave birth to Minneapolis, and the heritage of the saw mills and grain mills that they powered is now preserved and celebrated as Mill Ruins Park, a combination of greenspace, historical markers, and paved paths that run along the bank below St. Anthony’s Falls.

The Mississippi and its human and natural history are featured in the relatively recent Mississippi River National Recreation Area, a collection of sites up and downstream from the Twin Cities. A cruise along the Mississippi was a great way to commune with the mother of all rivers, which is surprisingly undeveloped below St. Paul.

The principal Visitor Center for the MRNRA is housed in the above-average Science Center of Minnesota in St. Paul, a decade-old building whose backside overlooks the river (and the riverboat docks on the farside). Between the permanent exhibits, IMAX features, and traveling exhibits, it’s easy to spend a day here.

Further downstream is old Fort Snelling, built in the early 19th century as outpost in the new territory. It sits high on the bluff above the Mississippi, looking upstream with the Minneapolis skyline above the water. The wetlands here are home to both the airport and a wildlife refuge.

For baseball fans, there’s the Twins, who somehow remain ‘small market’, at least in budget. Their three-decade stay at the Metrodome should close in the not-too-distant future, and the chance to see a game in one of baseball’s most ill-suited environments will soon, thankfully, end.

Best Way To Get Around:

I visited and wrote this journal before the tragic collapse of the bridge on I-35W. The loss of that key link across the river has done far more than create traffic problems, and my heart goes out to those who lost loved ones in the tragedy. I still have a lot of affection for this place, with lots of friends who live here. Like lots of residents, I'm sure, they seem more than a little shaken by having a piece of what we all take for granted just disappear, taking with it friends and neighbors.

Moving across the metropolitan area is a pain. The freeway system seemed close to overwhelmed, with even the outer beltway (I-694) reduced to stop-and-go traffic at 3 pm. Minneapolis is trying to head in the direction of light rail, and the first release is the three-year old Hiawatha Line that now runs from downtown past the Metrodome and southwest through 17 stations including Fort Snelling, both airport terminals, and the Mall of America. The fares are reasonable (at most , during rush hour), and this seemed like a really reasonable way to go—until I realized that my meeting destination was all the way on the northern edge of St. Paul. To avoid the rush hour traffic, I commuted completely around the perimeter from my brother’s SW Minneapolis home, gaping in awe at the standstill traffic on Highway 100 heading south. Choosing a route with highways that aren’t where most people are headed seemed a far better choice than one with the minimum mileage.

The downtowns of the twin cities were always further apart than I expected, and that route has also become increasingly busy. I was warned to avoid it at rush hour, and that was good advice. A new ‘Central Corridor’ line connecting the cities is just being planned, and won’t open until at least 2014.

"I never thought there was a good use for nuclear weapons, but this might be one."—Kansas City Royals pitcher Dan Quisenberry, 1982

It ain’t for purists. 25 years after it opened, with its end (at least for baseball) apparently in sight, the Metrodome still feels like a funny place for a game. Some of its flaws have been addressed—the incredibly bouncy turf of the first five years is ancient history—but it’s still loud, indoors, and scarred by the ‘baggie’ that covers the right-field stands.

I found myself downtown for the evening, waiting for my brother to finish a preview performance at the Guthrie. The Twins were in town, in the middle of a three-game series with the Blue Jays, featuring Frank Thomas one homer shy of 499. It’s a short walk from the Guthrie to the Metrodome, and it seemed like a good time to head to my first major-league game in years.

My first discovery—boy, ticket prices sure have gone up. Debating whether to deal with a ‘reseller’ or head to the windows, I ended up purchasing a great seat from the first and only guy I encountered—$30 for a $44 face value ticket just six rows back of the Twins dugout.

I went to two games here in the ‘80s, and my principal memory is that it was LOUD. The PA constantly implored Twins fans to ‘make some NOISE!’, and the announcer introduced each player with a tagline and a painfully rising volume (‘Kirrrrbyyyyyy PUCKETT!’). Each time, I left with a headache. Things have been ramped back a little in the intervening years, but it’s still a murky aural environment, and—although the volume wasn’t a problem—it was often hard to discern exactly what was being said.

The field is compromised by its dual-purpose role for football (both the Vikings and Gophers play here). Retractable stands for those games are tucked away against the center- and right-field lines, covered by the infamous blue ‘baggie’ behind the right fielder. It’s only 327’ down that line, and without the big blue tarp, the place would be paradise for power hitters. In this game, at least two hard singles were lined off that surface, and Greg Zaun just cleared it with a two-run homer that spelled doom for the home team, and a possible turning point in the career of Boof Bonser, the oddly named and apparently unconcerned Twins’ starting pitcher.

In three years, baseball fans may not have the Metrodome to kick around anymore. The Twins are planning a new stadium, on the other side of the downtown near the Target Center. Financed largely through sales tax monies, the 40,000-seat, baseball-only ‘Minnesota Twins Ballpark’ is described as an outdoor stadium, but has a retractable roof. Sketches and descriptions make it seem likely that the new park will be another in the series of decent stadiums that are finally replacing the cookie-cutter rings of the ‘70s. When that happens, the Metrodome may be best remembered as the Quiz described it on his first visit.

After two experiences in San Francisco’s Golden Gate NRA, I’m more intrigued by the idea of urban national park areas—particularly those that aren’t exclusively historic preservations. The Mississsippi NRA was created in 1988, which explains why it didn’t seem familiar from my years in Minnesota. Like Golden Gate, it’s a collection of sites; unlike GG, however, it has no large expanses of land (evidently, the Federal Government didn’t feel the need to hang on to large portions of the Twin Cities for national defense and protection from invasion).

This park consists of 40 sites along 72 miles of the River, mostly administered by other governmental agencies. The relatively new Mississippi River Visitor Center is tucked inside the lobby of the Science Museum of Minnesota, just on the east edge of downtown St. Paul. (Parking here is an issue—I paid $10 to park in the garage across the street after finding no better options on a Friday afternoon.) There’s a small series of exhibits on the Mississippi, its lock system, and its role in local and national history. A fair amount of space promotes national parklands throughout the country, and the bookstore thus sells items on both the Mississippi and a wide variety of national parks.

Downstream, adjacent to the airport, is Fort Snelling (the sole former military site in the Mississippi River NRA). Built on land purchased by Zebulon Pike, the fort served as the principal staging area for 19th century campaigns in the Dakotas and further west, and a major military intake and training area through WWII. Built on the River’s eastern bluffs, the view upstream to downtown Minneapolis is terrific. The lands adjoining the Fort are somewhat swampy, as you can tell during your descent into the airport, and evidently attracted little interest in development and settlement. Confusingly, the Fort and adjacent grounds are known as Historic Fort Snelling, and managed by the Minnesota Historical Society. Fort Snelling State Park is nearby but an entirely separate entity, and serves as a jumping off point for those interested in canoeing and kayaking on the Big Muddy, which is what attracted the few other people entering the Park along with me.

There’s also plenty of water: Fort Snelling sits at the junction of the Minnesota and Mississippi Rivers. The floodplains here are a terrific home for waterfowl, and when developers finally targeted these areas in the 1970’s, they were set aside as the Minnesota Valley National Wildlife Refuge, which stretches below the Fort and up the Minnesota. It has to be one of the few NWRs in sight of a major urban skyline.

Upriver on the Mississippi is the raison d’etre for the Twin Cities: St. Anthony’s Falls, whose hydropower made Minneapolis the grain processing center of the Midwest during the late 19th and early 20th century, giving birth to the firms that became General Mills and Pillsbury. This area is now set aside as Mill Ruins Park, the most recent addition to the park, and where I spent an afternoon.

No river is more central to America’s understanding of itself than the Mississippi, and Minneapolis is where the Mississippi becomes large enough to be navigable, making steamboats and (eventually) Mark Twain possible. The great river starts 200 miles upstream in Itasca State Park, where its source looks rather ordinary set among a host of other small lakes. Here, it’s only 20’ wide and three feet deep, but by the time it arrives in the Twin Cities it’s clearly a river of significance.

Traveling with my Dad, a fan of rivers and boat rides, it wasn’t surprising that he was interested getting out on the Mississippi. As much time as I’ve lived in the Mississippi’s large valley, it was surprising to realize that I’d never been on the river itself, and I was glad to make a cruise a part of our day. My kids were more interested in the Science Museum of Minnesota, so we headed to St. Paul, where cruises with the Padelford Packet Boat Co. depart from Harriet Island, across the river from the museum.

The 2 pm departure gave us the morning at the museum, and time for lunch—almost. We raced across the bridge to Harriet ‘Island’, called the boat company, and proceeded to take a wrong turn. On the next call, they graciously agreed not to sail without us, and we boarded and departed at 2:05 (the usual time, it turns out).

We found three deck chairs on the bow, tucked just underneath the balcony overhead. The 90-minute journey took us into view of Ft. Snelling, sited where the Minnesota River joins the Mississippi. Surprisingly, most of this trip is along wooded banks, which I wasn’t expecting. It does take a little time to pass beyond the city and its highway and railroad bridges (most notably the I-35E overpass), but I wasn’t prepared for the lack of civilization that characterized most of the trip. We speculated about how similar today’s Mississippi is t the river that early 19th century explorers and settlers used.

The day was mostly sunny and a little humid, and sitting in the light breezes on the River seemed a perfect way to pass the time. A recorded narration played occasionally, providing a few good stories. It felt a little impersonal, but nothing could mar the good feeling of a quiet day on the river. As the boat slowed at its turn-around point, a quarter-mile upstream from Fort Snelling atop the bluffs, it was easy to imagine coming upon this vantage point 175 years ago when it was the distant outpost of a fledgling government in a newly acquired land.

Details
Two companies sail the Mississippi: the Padelford Packet Boat Co. of St. Paul, and the Minneapolis Queen, which departs from Boom Island in Minneapolis. Tickets for a 90-minute ride with either company are around $16. Both are still operating in the aftermath of the tragic collapse of the I-35W bridge, which prevents the Queen from sailing south through the locks at St. Anthony’s Falls.

We had a day to spend in the Twin Cities before the next afternoon’s matinee performance at the Guthrie. We considered river cruises, museums, and parks before eventually heading to the Science Museum of Minnesota. This was in part dictated by its proximity to the River Cruise in St. Paul, but also by my kids’ love of science museums, and the current traveling exhibit A Day in Pompeii.

This building opened in 1999, and is located right on the Mississippi on West Kellogg Boulevard, just west of central St. Paul. It’s easy to reach from I-94, and its parking garage is just past the building as you approach from I-94 (if you come from the other direction, the RiverCentre parking lot is a little easier to get into, and priced the same at $10). $24 per adult bought us tickets for the 10:30 admittance to Pompeii, a 12:30 showing of the IMAX movie "Secrets of Ancient Greece", and free reign in the rest of the museum. We had about an hour to explore before heading to our rendezvous with Pompeii.

The central lobby is several stories high, a large open and airy space that looked great in the summer sunlight. The Mississippi River National Recreation Area is on the right, and at the rear is the entry to the exhibits, underneath the mezzanine containing the cafe and the exit from the IMAX theatre.

The first level display explores the geology of Minnesota and the discovery of the Mississippi, featuring the river’s source at Itasca State Park. The other exhibits are reached by stairs that descend along the river side of the museum, where the first level down holds both the entrance to the Pompeii exhibit, as well as an extensive gallery on health and biology. My kids were fascinated by this installation, which did a far more effective job than many museums in incorporating technology and subject matter. Rather than pushing all the buttons and running on to the next set, they sat and looked and listened about the outcome.

Soon enough, it was time for the Pompeii admission. This selection of the treasures from that tragic city is touring four American cities this summer. An audio tour is included with each admission, and has two tracks: the standard tour, and a ‘family’ track oriented at younger kids. It took a solid 90 minutes to see everything carefully, including the surprising and moving final gallery, which is separate from the display of artwork, carbonized bread loaves, and other items recovered since the rediscovery of Pompeii three centuries ago.

Other exhibits included, and a ground-level outdoor mini golf game (extra charge) with a water-use theme that my kids loved, and the light-activated singing steps that take you between levels. Throw in a reasonably priced and decent lunch at the cafe, and it added up to a great day here—even for those of us who raced off to catch the riverboat at 2pm.

Despite Johan Kohl's lament, it was inevitable that the power of the Mississippi's St. Anthony's Falls would be fully tapped. The River’s power was first harnessed for cutting lumber, although the soldiers at Fort Snelling also pioneered its use for grinding flour. Both industries were well established when Kohl lamented the falls' usurpation by commerce in the mid-1800s. Lumber eventually yielded the waterfront to grain, and the ruins of the milling industry are now preserved and explained in brand new Mill Ruins Park.

The structures on the banks themselves are largely gone, although foundations and a few walls can be seen. A walkway runs along the west/south shore, with a large number of signs chronicling the growth and decay of mills and Minneapolis itself. Buildings behind the River, and along Washington Avenue, have been reclaimed for use, including the Mill City Museum, which is far more interesting than you might suppose--the history of the milling industry is the history of Minneapolis. The complex sits just behind the ruins of Washburn A, the huge complex built by the company that evolved into General Mills. This modern, celebrated factory exploded in 1889, taking the lives of a few dozen employees. The financial rewards of milling were too great not to rebuild, and the golden age began, as Minneapolis produced the flour that fed the nation, if not the world. Most of it came from the fields of the upper Midwest, but the flourmen used the railway to bring harvests from across the country. Maps of the country’s railways and bushels per year illustrate how they processed crops from across the country with the power provided by St. Anthony’s Falls. The men who ran the mills ran the state, with several serving terms as U.S. Senators at the peak of the milling industry.

In the end, the development of electric power moved the center of the grain industry away from Minneapolis. By the 1930s, Buffalo had replaced the Twin Cities as the nation’s flour producing capital. General Mills maintained its headquarters here (and still does) but gradually reduced its presence on the river and at other area locations. The area sat abandoned for several decades, its status highlighted by a 1991 fire eerily reminiscent of the earlier Washburn A explosion. Mill Ruins Park preserves that original structure, with the jagged shell of the building open to the sky, its twisted beams now a setting for evening summer concerts and other activities. Exiting through the riverside door, be sure to note the lentil above the door that memorializes the nearly 20 victims of the explosions. It’s clear that this disaster shook the young city, calling into question the foundation that had driven its rapid growth and expansion.

To your left are what now passes for the falls, both preserved and tamed by years of work by the Corps of Engineers. The locks are here, too, and the riverboat Minneapolis Queen docks further upstream, providing another chance for a river tour and a passage through the locks. To the right is the large green space that begins Mill Ruins Park, featuring pleasant gardens, thick green grass, and what has to be an artificial mound whose peak is reached via a gently climbing spiral path. As my afternoon wound to a close, I kicked off my sandals and took a steeper, greener path to the top. The cool grass felt great between my toes, and I gazed out over the river and all it had wrought before heading back down to meet my brother for dinner.

A millwright, a weaver, or a sawyer might also enjoy what perturbed me; but the spirits and saints have now been driven off, the charm sullied. City building and speculation fever, and the arch enemies of beauty in our time have taken over here and are gradually turning the lovely haunts of nymphs and mermaids into a very prosaic millpond. The entire vicinity is on the verge of becoming a temple to the gods of manufacture and trade.—Johann Georg Kohl, Reisen im Nordwesten Vereinigten Staaten, 1857.

It’s odd to find technology in disarray: it disturbs our assumptions that progress allows no backward steps. In some ways, we don’t even see an area that was once the cutting edge of commerce, prosperity, and machinery after it’s abandoned and left to the elements. That was the state of Minneapolis’ share of the Mississippi River when I came here over 20 years ago—the milling industry had ended, and the waterfront had been nearly deserted; a part of town that didn’t even exist any more.

It was a waterfall that gave birth to Minneapolis, but the city it created had moved on. In the 1820s, soldiers from Fort Snelling came upriver to use St. Anthony’s Falls to power first a sawmill and then a small grist mill for those at the fort. Over the next several decades, commercial ventures of both kinds sprang up along both shores, prompting Kohl’s prophetic lament.

Despite the Mississippi’s length, these are the only falls of note along its entire course. That must have contributed to the romantic descriptions that briefly made them a 19th century destination before Kohl’s vision came to pass. The disappointment that several visitors expressed may also have stemmed from the nearly constantly changing nature of the falls: for over 10,000 years, they receded from their original location downstream near the future site of Fort Snelling, moving upriver at a few feet per year. This rate accelerated as uses for the river proliferated in the mid 19th century, with the falls receding as much as 40’ in a single year.

Use of the water not only destroyed the natural beauty of the falls, it threatened the falls themselves, as tunnels and dams constructed to use the waterpower gave way or were undermined by the River. Eventually, the newly formed Army Corps of Engineers was authorized to save the problem, and after 15 years they returned control of the falls to the millers and water companies whose excavations had nearly destroyed them.

Now, the falls are managed by the Corps, who installed a lock years ago to extend passage on the Mississippi. A dike and dam preserve the limestone cap that creates the falls, but their man-made regularity makes them look like the ‘water project’ that they are. With the mills gone, lumbering no longer using the river as medium for transport, and steamships no longer plying their way along the Mississippi, it seems a good example of the permanent changes that our temporary economic activities leave across the earth’s surface.

Placed virtually on the Mississippi, the lightly corrugated midnight blue steel skin of the Guthrie’s new home speaks both toughness, utility, and welcome. The building is designed to be a destination in itself, and is fully treated as one by the welcoming staff in every area. Eager to share and show off their new home, they point out its features and send you on to other floors and rooms. Space, color, and light level vary throughout the building, from the tall, airy first-floor space (complete with 6’ reproductions of rave architectural reviews from Time and the New York, Chicago and Minneapolis papers), to the low-ceilinged stainless steel Target Lounge on the 4th level, the deep blue, darker lounge at the other end, and the bright amber box hung off the 9th floor of the Studio Theatre and overlooking the Mississippi. People were everywhere in the building during the four afternoon hours that I hung out there, having coffee, touring, and shopping at the modest but intriguing gift shop on the first floor.

Jean Nouvel was the architect, and this is his first major building in North America. As others have noted, Nouvel’s building is chockablock with clever and rewarding optical tricks. The fifth floor approach to the ‘endless bridge’ stretching out towards the Mississippi—a massive, hundred-yard long cantilever across the street and halfway down the riverbank—has a circular bar set directly in the middle, its thin wall dividing the view. I was sure one side of that division was a mirror, but both sides looked down the long corridor and out to the river. As in other places throughout the theatre—most notably the large exterior concrete faces at street level—faint images from productions at the Guthrie’s original incarnation across town line the walls. Their ghostly appearance makes it difficult to tell if they’re projected or painted into the concrete (after three examinations, I settled on the later). The tricks begin with the long escalator that ascends to the fourth floor entrances to the Wuertele Thrust Stage, a faithful reinterpretation of the Guthrie’s original design. These narrow, nearly claustrophobic corridors are lit by a succession of bulbs at foot level, whose spacing is set just different enough from the step with that it produces a strobe-like effect as the stainless steel stairs move past. It’s suggestive of the beckoning neon sequences on a Holiday Inn sign, beckoning you into the building and into the fun (and, of course, reversed when the escalators head down). The welcome is complemented by the recording that plays (you’re going up three stories, so there’s certainly time for an introduction).

On level 5 is, obviously, the Level 5 Café, serving a one-sheet menu of sandwiches and entrées before matinees, and a prix-fixe menu in the evenings. There’s also a coffee and sandwich bar serving reasonable priced (and tasty!) sandwiches, desserts, and coffees. This area sits outside the uppermost entrances to the Thrust Stage, and the lounge area here is one of the prime destinations, day or night. I counted at least five other bar areas (some open only for quick refreshments during intermissions), and the ground floor Cue restaurant rounds out the food and drink options—or at least I think so.

It’s not perfect, though. Although designed to be a destination in and of itself, with theatre the principal but not sole reason for attending, the omission of any significant retail choices (apart from the gift shop) seems odd. The first floor lobby seems bereft of a purpose; currently it houses the large reproductions of the architectural reviews, and somewhat strangely, a car built for a production. This is the one piece of the building that seems confused about its role. The rest of the building begins on Level 4, reached from the lobby via long escalators on either side. The building’s principal destinations are all up and the routes to them are not obvious. Once there, however, the building rewards discovery. It’s worth the time to tour nearly every part of it, and taking the regularly scheduled 10 am tour ($8) will give you insights you might otherwise miss, plus take you backstage, into the theatres, and the production areas which are otherwise the only places you can’t see by yourself.