Mills and Mississippi

Minneapolis is known as the Mill City.  Saint Anthony Falls on the Mississippi River is located in what is now downtown.  It didn't take long for flour millers to recognize the falls would be ideal for using its power to mill flour.  Some of the largest mills at one time were active at the falls.  Now they are gone.  Mill City Museum http://www.millcitymuseum.org/  features exhibits about the history of Minneapolis, flour milling machinery, a water lab and a baking lab. The centerpiece of the exhibit is the multistory Flour Tower, where visitors sit in the cab of a freight elevator and are taken to different floors of the building, each designed to look like a floor in a working flour mill. Voices of people who worked in the Washburn A Mill are heard throughout the show. Visitors exit on the 8th floor, where extant equipment is interpreted by staff, and are then lead to the ninth-floor observation deck to view St. Anthony Falls.  We visited the museum and the river on a glorious day, Sunday, June 23rd.

Tim in front of the museum in Minneapolis

We joined a tour, which put us in an elevator with seats to whisk through the many floors of the mill museum.  The large doors of the freight elevator would open to display an exhibit of flour millings.  The tour guide would give an explanation of what we were seeing as well as a recording of former mills workers describing their jobs.  It was a very well done presentation.

Flour Tower elevator tour

A sign explaining the dangers of flour milling and safeguards

 We returned to the main floor and basement to view other exhibits about flour influence.  Some of the exhibits bought back memories of products and ad campaigns.

Do you remember Malt-O-Meal?

Everybody remembers a "version" of Betty Crooker

Top deck of museum provided a view of MS. River and the falls on right

Better view of the falls

After the Mill City Museum tour, we walked to Mill Ruins Park behind the old mill.  It was a beautiful day, so there were many people walking, roller blading, and biking along paths and the Arch Bridge.

Stone Arch Bridge by Saint Anthony Falls in Minneapolis

Stone Arch Bridge

View from Stone Arch Bridge

At various places around Minneapolis we saw these bike stations.  You can rent them. https://www.niceridemn.org/how_it_works/

Rental bike station

We also saw many of these around the streets downtown.  I wouldn't want to drive my car, let alone one of those rental bikes in one of these.  We have no idea how deep this hole went.  China maybe?

Minneapolis pot hole

We finished our day with dinner and headed back to the bus.  We stayed at two RV parks during our 8 day visit to the Twin Cities.  We'll talk about them in our next post.