Industry
The first private land claim at the falls was made by Franklin Steele in 1838 — though he didn't obtain financing for development until 1847, in the form of $12,000 for a 9/10 stake in the property. On May 18, 1848 president Polk approved the claims made in St. Anthony, and Steele was able to build his dam on the east side of the river above the Falls, blocking the east channel.
The dam extended diagonally into the river 700 feet (210 m), was 16 feet (4.9 m) high, and was secured to the limestone riverbed. Its thickness tapered from 40 wide at its base to 12 feet (3.7 m) wide at the top. Steele dispatched logging crews to the Crow Wing River in December 1847 to supply pine for the sawmill, and by September 1, 1848 sawing commenced using two up-down saws. He was able to sell the lumber readily, supplying construction projects in the booming town. The new community at the Falls attracted entrepreneurs from New England, many of whom had experience in lumber and milling. He had hired Ard Godfrey to help build and run the first commercial sawmill at the Falls. Godfrey knew the most efficient ways to use natural resources, like the falls, and the great pine forests, to make lumber products. Godfrey built the first home in St. Anthony, Steele had the town platted in 1849, and it incorporated in 1855.
By 1854, 300 squatters occupied the west bank of the river, and in 1855 Congress recognized the squatters' right to purchase the land they had claimed. The west side quickly developed scores of new mills and consortia. They built a dam diagonally into the river to the north, which, along with Steele's dam created the inverted V-shape, still apparent today. Steele created the St. Anthony Falls Water Power Company in 1856 with three New York financiers. The company struggled for several years, due to poor relations with the financiers, a depression, and the Civil War. In 1868 the firm reorganized with new officers including John Pillsbury, Richard and Samuel Chute, Sumner Farnham, and Frederick Butterfield.
As Minneapolis (and its former neighbor across the river, St. Anthony) developed, the water power at the falls became a source of power for several industries. Water power was used by sawmills, textile mills, and flour mills. Millers on the Minneapolis side formed a consortium to extract power by diverting upper-level water into waterwheel-equipped vertical shafts (driven through the limestone bedrock into the soft, underlying sandstone) and then through horizontal tunnels to the falls' lower level. These shafts and tunnels weakened the limestone and its sandstone foundation, accelerating the falls' upriver erosion to 26 feet (7.9 m) per year between 1857 and 1868. The falls quickly approached the edge of their limestone cap; once the limestone had completely eroded away, the falls would degenerate into sandstone rapids unsuitable for waterpower. The mills on the St. Anthony (east) side of the river were less-well organized harnessing the power, and therefore industry developed at a slower pace on that side.
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Famous quotes containing the word industry:
“Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgement; and he betrays instead of serving you if he sacrifices it to your opinion.”
—Edmund Burke (1729–1797)
“He had much industry at setting out,
Much boisterous courage, before loneliness
Had driven him crazed;
For meditations upon unknown thought
Make human intercourse grow less and less....”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)
“As our boys and men are all expecting to be Presidents, so our girls and women must all hold themselves in readiness to preside in the White House; and in no city in the world can honest industry be more at a discount than in this capital of the government of the people.”
—Jane Grey Swisshelm (1815–1884)