Table Of Content

NATURE’S CROSSROADS HISTORY OF THE URBAN ENVIRONMENT MARTIN V. MELOSI AND JOEL A. TARR, EDITORS NATURE’S CROSSROADS The Twin Cities and Greater Minnesota EDITED BY George Vrtis and Christopher W. Wells UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH PRESS Published by the University of Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh, Pa., 15260 Copyright © 2022, University of Pittsburgh Press All rights reserved Manufactured in the United States of America Printed on acid-free paper 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Cataloging-in-Publication data is available from the Library of Congress ISBN 13: 978-0-8229-4738-7 ISBN 10: 0-8229-4738-2 Cover photo: iStockPhoto Cover design: Joel W. Coggins For our students at Carleton College and Macalester College, and for our children CONTENTS Acknowledgments ix Introduction: Unearthing Nature’s Crossroads GeorGe Vrtis and Christopher W. Wells 3 PART I. The Dynamics of Environmental Change: Cities, Commodities, Hinterlands 1. A Tale of Two Waterfronts: Commerce, Industry, and the Environmental Transformation of Minnesota’s Twin Cities Christopher W. Wells and GeorGe Vrtis 19 2. Down to the Farm: Wheat Ecology and International Markets in Minnesota, 1850–1900 thomas FinGer 41 3. Competing Hinterlands: Saint Paul, Madison, and the Landscape of Burnett County, Wisconsin daVid a. laneGran 61 4. Upstream, Downstream: The Flooding of Anishinaabe Lands by Upper Mississippi Dams miChael d. mCnally 80 5. Making Stumps and Fields: Working Environments in the Woods and on the Cutover, 1890s–1930s KeVin C. BroWn 98 6. “Follow the Arrows to the Arrowhead”: The Environment of Tourism in the Interwar Years aaron shapiro 113 PART II: The Twin Cities and the Built Environment 7. Fountains of Life and Death: A History of the Minneapolis and Saint Paul Water Supply Systems John o. anFinson 131 viii CONTENTS 8. Urban Environmental History and Loring Park: How Cultural Views of Nature Influenced Recreational Design Karen Wellner 148 9. “Awheel from Chicago to the Twin Cities”: Legacies of Turn-of- the-Century Bicycle Paths in Minneapolis and Saint Paul James lonGhurst 163 10. The Suburb of Minneapolis: Defining the City’s “Urban” Form roBert s. thompson 179 11. The Campus as Watershed: Urban Sustainability and the Pedagogy of Place Joseph underhill 195 PART III: Environmental Politics, Thought, and Justice 12. Monumental Encounters: The Politics of History, Conservation, and the Reconstruction of Grand Portage, 1922–1958 Chantal norrGard 213 13. Pittsburgh’s Colony in Saint Paul’s Hinterland: Tensions over Environmentalism in Northeastern Minnesota’s Iron Range JeFFrey t. manuel 229 14. A House Divided: The Minnesota Experimental City and Competing Narratives of Conservation todd a. Wildermuth 245 15. Dissecting a Nation-Leading Legacy: The Minnesota Acid Rain Story GreGory C. pratt 259 16. The Urban Roots of Militant Indian Protest: AIM’s Origins in the Twin Cities, 1968–1973 William C. Barnett 274 17. Radioactive Waste, Public Debate, and Environmental Justice at Prairie Island James W. Feldman 290 Afterword: Minnesota’s Many Intersecting Crossroads Kathleen a. Brosnan 307 Notes 315 List of Contributors 383 Index 385 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS  the idea For this BooK emerGed just over a decade ago, not long after both of us had moved to Minnesota and taken up our positions at Carleton College and Macalester College. We began talking to one another about our shared interests and the rather limited amount of work done on the state’s environmental history. We were both committed to trying to incorporate local history and scholarship into our courses, and as newcomers to Minnesota with young families we both had a strong desire to connect to the region’s stories and landscapes. Those two intersecting forces inspired the genesis of this book, and so we wish to begin by thanking the many students we have taught over the years in our environmental history courses, as well as our respective children for launching us on the illuminating and lengthy odyssey that has led to this book. We are also grateful to several institutions and their staffs for supporting this book. The Minnesota Historical Society has been a steadfast partner in all of the work we have undertaken for this book and for our earlier work on Minnesota’s environmental past. We will always be thankful to the many staff members who provided expert consultations, taught us about their collections; waived duplication and copyright use fees; published our bibliography and re- search guide on Twin Cities environmental history, Twin Cities Environmental History: A Bibliography of Published and Unpublished Sources (2012); hosted our conference on Minnesota environmental history; helped us develop and launch our app, Minnesota Environments; and encouraged us at every turn to complete this book. We are especially grateful to Robert Horton and Lesley Kadish for their inspiring and creative approach to thinking about history and for always offering their enthusiastic and unwavering support. Thanks also to Debbie Miller, who was particularly generous in guiding us into the society’s collections. The Minnesota Historical and Cultural Heritage Grant Program (also known as Legacy Grants) was another mainstay in helping make this book possible. Since 2008 this state-funded program has been providing financial support for projects focused on preserving Minnesota’s history and culture, and we were fortunate to receive one of these grants in 2010. We feel very ix