Minneapolis,[a] officially the City of Minneapolis,[13] is a city in
the state of
Minnesota and the
county seat of
Hennepin County.[4] With a population of 429,954, it is the state's
most populous city as of the
2020 census.[7] It occupies both banks of the
Mississippi River and adjoins
Saint Paul, the state capital of Minnesota. Minneapolis, Saint Paul, and the surrounding area are collectively known as the
Twin Cities, a metropolitan area with 3.69 million residents.[14] Minneapolis is built on an artesian aquifer on flat terrain, and is known for cold, snowy winters and hot, humid summers. Nicknamed the "City of Lakes",[15] Minneapolis is abundant in water, with
thirteen lakes, wetlands, the
Mississippi River, creeks, and waterfalls. The city's public park system is connected by the
Grand Rounds National Scenic Byway.
Dakota people originally inhabited the site of today's Minneapolis. European settlement began north of
Fort Snelling along
Saint Anthony Falls—the only natural waterfall on the Mississippi River.[16] The city's early growth was attributed to its proximity to the fort and the falls providing power for industrial activity. Minneapolis was the 19th-century
lumber and
flour milling capital of the world, and as home to the
Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis has preserved its financial clout into the 21st century. A Minneapolis Depression-era labor strike brought about federal worker protections. Work in Minneapolis contributed to the computing industry, and the city is the birthplace of
General Mills, the
Pillsbury brand,
Target Corporation, and of
Thermo King mobile refrigeration.
Residents adhere to more than fifty religions, and thousands choose to volunteer their time. Despite its well-regarded quality of life,[17] Minneapolis faces a pressing challenge in the form of stark disparities among its residents—arguably the most critical issue confronting the city in the 21st century.[18] Governed by a mayor-council system, Minneapolis has a political landscape dominated by the
Minnesota Democratic–Farmer–Labor Party (DFL), with
Jacob Frey serving as mayor since 2018.
About a half dozen[b]Native American nations inhabited Minnesota, and in modern times, two nations dominated:[22] the
Dakota (one tribe of the Sioux nation)[23] and the
Ojibwe (also known as Chippewa, one tribe of the Anishinaabe nations).[24] Evidence says the Dakota were state residents in or before 1000 AD.[20] Dakota are the only inhabitants who claimed no other land;[25] they have no traditions of having immigrated and their site of creation is at nearby
Bdóte.[26][c] The Ojibwe migrated west from the Atlantic states to northern Minnesota where they displaced many Dakota by the 17th century.[28] In the
Dakota language, the city's name is Bde Óta Othúŋwe ('Many Lakes Town').[d]
Around 1680, first French explorers and then the British arrived[31] and traded in
furs for nearly 150 years[32] with the Dakota and Ojibwe as partners.[33] After the US became a country, the fur trade declined, and US Americans gradually emerged as exploiters—desiring forests for timber and land for farms.[34] Purchasing most of modern-day Minneapolis,
Zebulon Pike made the
1805 Treaty of St. Peter with the Dakota.[e] Pike bought a 9-square-mile (23 km2) strip of land—coinciding with the sacred place of Dakota origin[27]—on the Mississippi south of Saint Anthony Falls,[38] with the agreement the US would build a military fort and trading post there and the Dakota would retain their land use rights.[39] In 1819, the
US Army built
Fort Snelling[40] to direct Native American trade away from British-Canadian traders, and to deter warring between the Dakota and
Ojibwe in northern Minnesota.[41] The fort attracted traders, settlers, and merchants, spurring growth in the surrounding region. Agents of the St. Peters Indian Agency at the fort enforced the US policy of assimilating Native Americans into European-American society, asking them to give up subsistence hunting and cultivate the land.[42] Missionaries encouraged Native Americans to convert from
their religion to Christianity.[42]
Under pressure from US officials[43] in a series of treaties, the Dakota ceded their land—which they consider to be living (a
relative, and not property)[44]—first to the east and then to the west of the Mississippi.[45][f] After Minnesota became a territory in 1849[45] cession treaties unleashed formerly prohibited[57] settlement and US
manifest destiny.[58] Dakota leaders twice refused to sign the next treaty until they were paid for the previous one.[59] Historians have called Minnesota's leaders "thieves",[60] and their actions "scams",[61] "deceit, coercion, and broken promises".[62] In the space of sixty years, the US had seized all of Dakota land. In the decades following these treaty signings, the US government rarely honored their terms.[63] After closing in 1858, the
University of Minnesota was revived using land taken from the Dakota people under the
Morrill Land-Grant Acts in 1862.[64][65]
At the beginning of the
American Civil War, annuity payments owed in June 1862 to the Dakota by treaty were late, causing acute hunger among the Dakota.[66][g] Facing starvation[68] a faction of the Dakota declared
war in August and killed settlers.[69] Serving without any prior military experience, US commander
Henry Sibley had raw recruits,[70] among them the only mounted troops were volunteers from Minneapolis and Saint Paul with no military experience.[71] The war went on for six weeks in the Minnesota River valley.[72] Some terrified settlers traveled 80 miles (130 km) from the massacre to Minneapolis for safety.[73] After a US
kangaroo court,[74] 38 Dakota men died by hanging.[72] The army marched 1,700 non-hostile Dakota men, women, children, and elders 150 miles (240 km) to a
concentration camp at Fort Snelling.[75] Minneapolitans reportedly threatened more than once to attack the camp.[76] In 1863, the US "abrogated and annulled" all treaties with the Dakota.[77] With Governor
Alexander Ramsey calling for their extermination,[78] most Dakota were exiled from Minnesota.[79]
While the Dakota were being expelled,
Franklin Steele laid claim to the east bank of
Saint Anthony Falls,[80] and
John H. Stevens built a home on the west bank.[81] Residents had divergent ideas on names for their community. In 1852,
Charles Hoag proposed combining the Dakota word for 'water' (mni[h]) with the Greek word for 'city' (polis), yielding Minneapolis. In 1851 after a meeting of the
Minnesota Territorial Legislature, leaders of east bank St. Anthony lost their bid to move the capital from Saint Paul.[86] In a close vote, Saint Paul and
Stillwater agreed to divide federal funding:[86] Saint Paul would be the capital, while Stillwater would build the prison. The St. Anthony contingent eventually won the state university.[86] In 1855 with a charter from the legislature, Steele and associates opened the
first bridge across the Mississippi; the toll bridge cost pedestrians three cents ($0.94 in 2022).[87] In 1856, the territorial legislature authorized Minneapolis as a town on the Mississippi's west bank.[82] Minneapolis was incorporated as a city in 1867, and in 1872, it merged with St. Anthony.[88]
Water power, lumber, and flour milling
Minneapolis developed around Saint Anthony Falls, the only natural waterfall on the Mississippi, which was used as a source of energy.[16] A 1989 Minnesota Archaeological Society analysis of the Minneapolis riverfront describes the use of
water power in Minneapolis between 1880 and 1930 as "the greatest direct-drive waterpower center the world has ever seen".[89] Minneapolis earned the nickname "Mill City."[90][15] The city's two founding industries—lumber and flour milling—developed in the 19th century nearly concurrently. Flour milling overshadowed lumber for some decades; nevertheless, each came to prominence for about fifty years.[i] The city's first commercial
sawmill was built in 1848, and the first
gristmill in 1849.[92][j]
A lumber industry was built around forests in northern Minnesota, largely by lumbermen emigrating from
Maine's depleting forests.[95][96] Towns built in western Minnesota with lumber from Minneapolis sawmills shipped their wheat back to the city for milling.[97] The region's waterways were used to transport logs well after railroads developed; the Mississippi River carried logs to
St. Louis until the early 20th century.[98] In 1871, of the thirteen mills sawing lumber in St. Anthony, eight ran on water power and five ran on steam power.[99] Minneapolis supplied the materials for farmsteads and settlement of rapidly expanding cities on the
prairies that lacked wood.[100]White pine milled in Minneapolis built
Miles City, Montana;
Bismarck, North Dakota;
Sioux Falls, South Dakota;
Omaha, Nebraska; and
Wichita, Kansas.[101] Auxiliary businesses on the river's west bank in 1871 included woolen mills, iron works, a railroad machine shop, and mills for cotton, paper, sashes, and wood-planing.[102] Due to the occupational hazards of milling, by the 1890s, six companies manufactured artificial limbs.[103]
Growing use of steam power freed lumbermen and their sawmills from dependence on the falls.[104] Lumber was the main Minneapolis industry in 1870,[105] before flour milling overtook it in the 1880s.[105] Lumbering reached a statewide peak in 1900 when its decline began.[106] After depleting Minnesota's white pine,[107] some lumbermen moved on to
Douglas fir in the
Pacific Northwest.[108] Sawmills in the city including the Minneapolis
Weyerhauser mill closed by 1919.[109]
Disasters struck the city in the late 19th century. Dug under the river at
Nicollet Island, the
Eastman tunnel leaked in 1869. Water sucked the 6 ft (1.8 m)
tailrace into a 90 ft (27 m)-wide chasm.[110] Community-led repairs failed and in 1870, several buildings and mills fell into the river.[110] For years, the
U.S. Army Corps of Engineers struggled to close the gap with timber until their concrete dike held in 1876.[110] In 1870, and again in 1887, fire destroyed the entire row of sawmills on the east bank.[111] In 1878, an explosion of flour dust at the
Washburn A mill killed eighteen people[112] and demolished several mills.[113] The explosion cost the city nearly one half of its capacity, but the mill was rebuilt the next year.[114] In 1893, fire spread from Nicollet Island to Boom Island to northeast Minneapolis where wind stopped it at the stone
Grain Belt Brewery. Twenty blocks were destroyed and two people died.[115]
The
hard red spring wheat grown in Minnesota became valuable—$0.50 profit per barrel in 1871 ($12.21 in 2022) increased to $4.50 in 1874 ($116.00 in 2022)[123]—and Minnesota "patent" flour was recognized at the time as the best bread flour in the world.[119] By 1895, through the efforts of silent partner
William Hood Dunwoody, Washburn-Crosby exported four million barrels of flour a year to the United Kingdom.[124] When exports peaked in 1900, fourteen percent of America's grain was milled in Minneapolis[119] and about one third of that was shipped overseas.[125] Overall production peaked at 18.5 million barrels in 1916.[126]
Decades of
soil exhaustion,
stem rust, and changes in freight tariffs combined to quash the city's flour industry.[127] In the 1920s, Washburn-Crosby and Pillsbury developed new milling centers in
Buffalo, New York, and
Kansas City, Missouri, while maintaining their headquarters in Minneapolis.[128] Under increasingly consolidated management, plants on the Minneapolis mill properties generated
hydroelectricity with surplus water.[129] Hydroelectricity became the equal of flour milling as a user of the falls's power.[130]Northern States Power bought the united mill companies in 1923,[131] and by the 1950s controlled over 53,000 horsepower at the falls.[132] In 1971, the falls became a
national historic district.[133] Hitherto "the backside of the city",[134] the riverfront caught the attention of a convoluted network of private and government interests who sometimes fought. They developed
townhouses and
high rises, and rebuilt and renovated lofts—often neglecting affordability—revitalizing mills on both banks.[135] The upper St. Anthony
lock and dam permanently closed in 2015,[136] and the
region's three locks were under federal disposition study as of 2023.[137]
Minneapolis Star humorist Don Morrison wrote that the city doubled, tripled, then quadrupled its population every decade, and in 1922, the city's assessed
property value was $266 million, "nearly 10 times the price paid for the entire midcontinent in the Louisiana Purchase."[138] After the milling era waned, a "modern, major city"[138] surfaced in 1900, attracted skilled workers,[139] and depended on expertise from the university's
Institute of Technology.[140]
In 1886, businessman George D. Munsing found that itchy wool underwear could be covered in silk. His Minneapolis textile business—known then as Munsingwear, today as Perry Ellis[142]—lasted a century and in 1923, was the world's largest manufacturer of underwear.[143] In 1922, inventor David W. Onan founded Onan Corporation (bought by Cummins in 1986[144]), that built and sold generators in Minneapolis.[145] Onan brought electricity to midwestern markets before power lines covered the country, and supplied about half the generator sets the US military used during World War II.[146]Frederick McKinley Jones invented mobile
refrigeration in Minneapolis, and with his associate founded
Thermo King in 1938.[147]Medtronic, founded in a Minneapolis garage in 1949,[148] and today domiciled in Ireland, as of 2022 usually appears in lists of the world's largest
medical device makers.[149]
Minnesota's computer industry was the largest and most varied in the US beginning in the 1950s, and in 1989 employed 68,000 people.[150][k]Minneapolis-Honeywell built a south Minneapolis campus where their experience regulating indoor temperature earned them contracts controlling military servomechanisms like the secret
Norden bombsight and the C-1
autopilot.[152] In the 1960s, the
Honeywell 316 and DDP-516 were nodes in
ARPANET, the internet's precursor.[152] The
Honeywell Project from 1968 until 1990 advocated for peaceful means to replace the company's military interests.[152] General Mills built computers for
NASA in northeast Minneapolis in the 1950s.[153] In 1957,
Control Data began in downtown Minneapolis, where in the
CDC 1604 they replaced
vacuum tubes with
transistors. Later Control Data moved to the suburbs[l] and built the
CDC 6600 and
CDC 7600, the first
supercomputers.[155] A highly successful business until disbanded in 1990, Control Data opened a facility in economically depressed north Minneapolis in 1967, bringing jobs and good publicity.[155] The
University of Minnesota formed an educational computing group that placed three or four personal computers in every Minnesota school, and in 1991 the group's personnel released
Gopher on a
Macintosh SE/30 which ran until World Wide
Web traffic surpassed Gopher traffic in 1994.[156]
In many ways, the 20th century was a difficult time of bigotry and malfeasance, beginning with four decades of corruption.[161] Known initially as a kindly physician, mayor
Doc Ames made his brother police chief, ran the city into crime, and tried to leave town in 1902 according to historian Iric Nathanson.[162]Lincoln Steffens published Ames's story in "The Shame of Minneapolis" in 1903.[163] The
Ku Klux Klan was a force in the city from 1921[164] until 1923.[165] The gangster
Kid Cann engaged in bribery and intimidation between the 1920s and the 1940s.[166] After Minnesota passed a
eugenics law in 1925, the proprietors of
Eitel Hospitalsterilized people at
Faribault State Hospital.[167]
The city was relatively unsegregated before 1910,[169] with a Black population of less than one percent,[170] when a developer wrote the first restrictive covenant based on race and ethnicity into a Minneapolis deed.[171] Realtors adopted the practice, thousands of times preventing non-Whites from owning or leasing properties;[172] this practice continued for four decades until the city became more and more racially divided.[173] Though such language was prohibited by state law in 1953 and by the federal
Fair Housing Act of 1968,[174] restrictive covenants against minorities remained in many Minneapolis deeds as of the 2020s, and in 2021 the city gave residents a means to discharge them.[175]
During the summer of 1934 and the financial downturn of the
Great Depression, the
Citizens' Alliance, an association of employers, refused to negotiate with
teamsters. The truck drivers
union executed
strikes in May and July–August.[176]Charles Rumford Walker explains in his book American City that Minneapolis teamsters succeeded in part due to the "military precision of the strike machine".[177] The union victory ultimately led to
1935 and
1938 federal laws protecting workers' rights.[178]
From the end of World War I in 1918 until 1950,
antisemitism was commonplace in Minneapolis—
Carey McWilliams called the city the anti-Semitic capital of the US.[179] A
hate group called the
Silver Legion of America held meetings in the city from 1936 to 1938.[180] In the 1940s, mayor
Hubert Humphrey worked to rescue the city's reputation,[181] and helped the city establish the country's first
fair employment practices and a human-relations council that interceded on behalf of minorities.[182] However, the lives of Black people had not been improved.[169] In 1966 and 1967—years of significant
turmoil across the US—suppressed anger among the Black population was released in two disturbances on Plymouth Avenue.[183] A coalition reached a peaceful outcome but again failed to solve Black poverty and unemployment.
Prince, who was
bused to fourth grade in 1967, said in retrospect, "he believed that Minnesota at that time was no more enlightened than segregationist Alabama had been".[184]
Between 1958 and 1963—in the largest
urban renewal plan undertaken in America as of 2022[update][185]—Minneapolis demolished "
skid row". Gone were 35 acres (10 ha) with more than 200 buildings, or roughly 40 percent of downtown, including the
Gateway District and its significant architecture, such as the
Metropolitan Building.[186] Efforts to save the building failed but encouraged interest in historic preservation.[186]
Immigration helped to curb the city's mid-20th century population decline. But because of a few radicalized persons, the city's large Somali population was targeted with discrimination after
9/11, when its
hawalas or banks were closed.[195]
On May 25, 2020, 17-year-old
Darnella Frazier recorded the
murder of George Floyd;[196] her video contradicted the police department's initial statement.[197] Floyd, an African American man, suffocated when
Derek Chauvin, a White Minneapolis police officer, knelt on his neck and back for more than nine minutes. While Floyd was neither the first nor the last Black man killed by Minneapolis police,[198][199] his murder sparked international rebellions and mass protests.[200] Reporting on
the local insurgency, The New York Times said that "over three nights, a five-mile stretch of Minneapolis sustained extraordinary damage"[201]—destruction included a police station that demonstrators overran and set on fire.[202] The Twin Cities experienced
ongoing unrest over racial injustice from 2020 to 2022.[203]
Structural racism
Minneapolis has a history of
structural racism[204] and has racial disparities in nearly every aspect of society.[205] Some historians and commentators have said White Minneapolitans used discrimination based on race against the city's non-White residents. As White settlers displaced the indigenous population during the 19th century, they claimed the city's land,[206] and Kirsten Delegard of
Mapping Prejudice explains that today's disparities evolved from control of the land.[169] Discrimination increased when flour milling moved to the
East Coast and the economy declined.[207] The
I-35W highway built in 1959 under the
Interstate Highway System[208] cut through Black and Mexican neighborhoods.[209]
The foundation laid by racial
covenants on residential segregation, property value, homeownership, wealth, housing security, access to green spaces, trees and parks, and health equity shapes the lives of people in 2022.[210] The city wrote in a decennial plan that racially discriminatory federal housing policies starting in the 1930s "prevented access to mortgages in areas with Jews, African-Americans and other minorities", and "left a lasting effect on the physical characteristics of the city and the financial well-being of its residents."[211]
Discussing a
Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis report on how systemic racism compromises education in Minnesota,[212] Professor
Keith Mayes says, "So the housing disparities created the educational disparities that we still live with today."[213] Professor
Samuel Myers Jr. says of
redlining, "Policing policies evolved that substituted explicit racial profiling with scientific management of racially disparate arrests. ... racially discriminatory policies became institutionalized and 'baked in' to the fabric of Minnesota life."[214][m] In 2020, government efforts to address these disparities include declaring racism a
public health emergency,[216] and zoning changes passed by the 2018
Minneapolis City Council 2040 plan.[217]
The history and economic growth of Minneapolis are linked to water, the city's defining physical characteristic.
Long periods of glaciation and interglacial melt carved several riverbeds through what is now Minneapolis.[219] During the
last glacial period, around 10,000 years ago, ice buried in these ancient river channels melted, resulting in basins that filled with water to become the
lakes of Minneapolis.[220] Meltwater from
Lake Agassiz fed the
glacial River Warren, which created
a large waterfall that eroded upriver past the confluence of the Mississippi River, where it left a 75-foot (23-meter) drop in the Mississippi.[221] This site is located in what is now downtown Saint Paul. The new waterfall, later called Saint Anthony Falls, in turn, eroded up the Mississippi about eight miles (13 kilometers) to its present location, carving the
Mississippi River gorge as it moved upstream.
Minnehaha Falls also developed during this period via similar processes.[222][221]
Minneapolis is sited above an
artesian aquifer[223] and on flat terrain. Its total area is 59 sq mi (152.8 km2), of which six percent is covered by water.[224] The city has a 12-mile (19 km) segment of the Mississippi River, four streams, and 17 waterbodies—13 of them lakes,[225] with 24 miles (39 km) of lake shoreline.[226]
A 1959 report by the US
Soil Conservation Service listed Minneapolis's elevation above
mean sea level as 830 feet (250 meters).[227] The city's lowest elevation of 687 feet (209 m) above sea level is near the confluence of Minnehaha Creek with the Mississippi River.[228] Sources disagree on the exact location and elevation of the city's highest point, which is cited as being between 967 and 985 feet (295 and 300 m) above sea level.[n]
Minneapolis has 83 neighborhoods and 70 neighborhood organizations.[231] In some cases, two or more neighborhoods act together under one organization.[232]
Around 1990, the city set up the Neighborhood Revitalization Program (NRP), in which every one of the city's eighty-some neighborhoods participated.[233] Funded for 20 years through 2011, with $400 million
tax increment financing (TIF),[233] the program caught the eye of
UN-Habitat who considered it an example of
best practices. Residents had a direct connection to government in NRP, whereby they proposed ideas appropriate for their area, and NRP reviewed the plans and provided implementation funds.[233][234] The city's Neighborhood and Community Relations department took NRP's place in 2011[235] and is funded only by city revenue.[236] In 2023, two neighborhood organizations merged and others contemplated similar moves so they could combine reduced resources.[236] In his 2024 proposed budget, the mayor suggested an increase in base funding for neighborhood organizations.[237]
In 2018,
Minneapolis City Council approved the Minneapolis 2040 Comprehensive Plan, which resulted in a city-wide end to
single-family zoning.[238]Slate reported that Minneapolis was believed to be the first major city in the US to make citywide such a revision in housing possibilities.[239] At the time, 70 percent of residential land was zoned for detached, single-family homes,[240] though many of those areas had "nonconforming" buildings with more housing units.[241] City leaders sought to increase the supply of housing so more neighborhoods would be affordable and to decrease the effects single-family zoning had caused on racial disparities and segregation.[242] The
Brookings Institution called it "a relatively rare example of success for the
YIMBY agenda".[243] In 2023, a district court judge ruled that the plan violated the Minnesota Environmental Rights Act and that the city must abandon it.[244] The city reverted to its previous decennial plan for 2030.[245]
Climate
Minneapolis experiences a hot-summer
humid continental climate (Dfa in the
Köppen climate classification),[246] that is typical of southern parts of the
Upper Midwest; it is situated in USDA
plant hardiness zone 5a.[247][248][249] Minneapolis has cold, snowy winters and hot, humid summers, as is typical in a continental climate. The difference between average temperatures in the coldest winter month and the warmest summer month is 58.1 °F (32.3 °C).
The Minneapolis area experiences a full range of precipitation and related weather events, including snow, sleet, ice, rain, thunderstorms, and fog. The highest recorded temperature is 108 °F (42 °C) in
July 1936 while the lowest is −41 °F (−41 °C) in January 1888.[250] The snowiest winter on record was 1983–1984, when 98.6 in (250 cm) of snow fell.[251] The least-snowy winter was 1930–1931, when 14.2 inches (36 cm) fell.[251] According to the
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the annual average for
sunshine duration is 58 percent.[252]
Mexicanmigrant workers began coming to Minnesota as early as 1860, although few stayed year-round.[266] Latinos eventually settled in several neighborhoods in Minneapolis, including
Phillips,
Whittier,
Longfellow and
Northeast.[267] Before the turn of the 21st century, Latinos were the state's largest[266] and fastest-growing group of immigrants.[268]
Chinese began immigration in the 1870s and Chinese businesses centered on the
Gateway District and Glenwood Avenue.[278]Westminster Presbyterian Church gave language classes and support for
Chinese Americans in Minneapolis, many of whom had fled discrimination in western states.[279]Japanese Americans, many relocated from San Francisco, worked at
Camp Savage, a secret military
Japanese-language school that trained interpreters and translators.[280] Following World War II, some Japanese and Japanese Americans remained in Minneapolis, and by 1970, they numbered nearly 2,000, forming part of the state's largest
Asian American community.[281] In the 1950s, the US government relocated
Native Americans to cities like Minneapolis, attempting to do away with
Indian reservations.[282] Around 1970,
Koreans arrived,[283] and the first
Filipinos came to attend the
University of Minnesota.[284]Vietnamese,
Hmong (some from
Thailand),
Lao, and
Cambodians settled mainly in Saint Paul around 1975, but some built organizations in Minneapolis.[285][286] In 1992, 160
Tibetan immigrants came to Minnesota, and many settled in the city's Whittier neighborhood.[287]Burmese immigrants arrived in the early 2000s, with some moving to
Greater Minnesota.[288] The population of people from India in Minneapolis increased by 1,000 between 2000 and 2010, making it the largest concentration of Indians living in the state.[289]
The population of Minneapolis grew until 1950 when the census peaked at 521,718—the only time it has exceeded a half million. The population then declined for decades; after World War II, people moved to the suburbs, and generally out of the Midwest.[290]
In 1910, there were approximately 2,500 Black residents,[291] and by 1930, Minneapolis had one of the nation's highest literacy rates[292] among Black residents.[293][294] However,
discrimination prevented them from obtaining higher-paying jobs.[295] In 1935,
Cecil Newman and the Minneapolis Spokesman led a year-long consumer boycott of four area breweries that refused to hire Blacks.[296] Employment improved during World War II, but
housing discrimination persisted.[297] Between 1950 and 1970, the Black population in Minneapolis increased by 436 percent.[296] After the
Rust Belt economy declined in the 1980s, Black migrants were attracted to Minneapolis for its job opportunities, good schools, and relatively safe neighborhoods.[298]
The
Williams Institute reported that the Twin Cities had an estimated 4.2%
LGBT adult population in 2020.[302] In 2022, the
Human Rights Campaign gave Minneapolis its highest score possible on the Municipal Equality Index of support for the LGBTQ+ population.[303]
Census and estimates
Minneapolis is the country's 46th largest city.[304] and, by 2023 population, the state's largest city.[305] According to the
2020 US census, the population of Minneapolis was 429,954.[306]Hispanic and Latinos comprised 44,513 (10.4 percent).[307] For those who were not Hispanic or Latino, 249,581 people (58.0 percent) were
White alone (62.7 percent White alone or in combination), 81,088 (18.9 percent) were
Black or African American alone (21.3 percent Black alone or in combination), 24,929 (5.8 percent) were
Asian alone, 7,433 (1.2 percent) were
American Indian and Alaska Native alone, 25,387 (0.6 percent) some other race alone, and 34,463 (5.2 percent) were
multiracial.[306]
The most common ancestries in Minneapolis according to the 2021
American Community Survey (ACS) were
German (22.9 percent),
Irish (10.8 percent),
Norwegian (8.9 percent),
Subsaharan African (6.7 percent), and
Swedish (6.1 percent).[308] Among those five years and older, 81.2 percent spoke only
English at home, while 7.1 percent spoke
Spanish and 11.7 percent spoke other languages, including large numbers of
Somali and
Hmong speakers.[308] About 13.7 percent of the population was
born abroad, with 53.2 percent of them being
naturalizedUS citizens. Most immigrants arrived from Africa (40.6 percent), Asia (24.6 percent), and Latin America (25.2 percent), with 34.6 percent of all foreign-born residents having arrived in 2010 or earlier.[308]
The 2021 ACS reported that the median household income in Minneapolis was $69,397. It was $97,670 for families, $123,693 for married couples, and $54,083 for non-family households.[309][310] The median gross rent in Minneapolis was $1,225, and 92.7 percent of housing units in Minneapolis were occupied. Housing units in the city built in 1939 or earlier comprised 43.7 percent.[311] About 15.0 percent of residents lived in
poverty.[312] The percentage of residents who had obtained a
bachelor's degree or higher was 53.6 percent, and 92.1 percent had at least a
high school diploma.[313] US
veterans made up 3.2 percent of the population.[308]
In Minneapolis, African Americans comprised approximately 20% of the population as of 2020.[306] Blacks owned homes at a rate one-third that of White families.[314] In the metro area, Black home ownership declined between 2000 and 2018; in the Twin Cities for that period, 93 percent of new Black households rented their homes.[315] In 2018, the median income for a Black family was $36,000, which was $47,000 less than a White family's median income. This income gap was one of the largest in the country, with Black Minneapolitans earning about 44% of what White Minneapolitans earned annually.[314]
Religion
The indigenous Dakota people believed in the
Great Spirit, and were surprised that not all European settlers were religious.[317]
Aligning with a national trend, the metro area's next largest group after Christians is the 23 percent
non-religious population.[318] At the same time, more than 50 denominations and religions are present in Minneapolis, representing most of the world's religions.[317]Temple Israel was built in 1928 by the city's first
Jewish congregation, Shaarai Tov, which was formed in 1878.[273] By 1959, a Temple of Islam was located in north Minneapolis.[325] In 1971, a reported 150 persons attended classes at a Hindu temple near the university.[325] In 1972, a relief agency resettled the first
Shi'a Muslim family from Uganda in the Twin Cities.[326] Somalis who live in Minneapolis are primarily
Sunni Muslim.[327] In 2022, Minneapolis amended its noise ordinance to allow broadcasting the
Muslim call to prayer five times per day.[328] The city has about seven
Buddhist centers and meditation centers.[329]
Early in the city's history, millers were required to pay for wheat with cash during the growing season, and then to store the wheat until it was needed for flour.[332] The
Minneapolis Grain Exchange was founded in 1881; located near the riverfront, it is the only exchange as of 2023 for
hard red spring wheat
futures.[333]
Minneapolis area employment is primarily in trade, transportation, utilities, education, health services, and professional and business services. Smaller numbers of residents are employed in manufacturing, leisure and hospitality, mining, logging, and construction.[336]
During the
Gilded Age, the
Walker Art Center began as a private art collection in the home of lumberman
T. B. Walker who extended free admission to the public.[345] Around 1940, the center's focus shifted to modern and contemporary art.[346]
The
Minneapolis Institute of Art (Mia) is located in south-central Minneapolis on the 10-acre (4 ha) former homestead of the
Morrison family.[347] The collection of more than 90,000 artworks spans six continents and about 5,000 years.[348] Perhaps reflecting the ambitions of the founders, competition winner
McKim, Mead & White designed a complex seven times the size of what opened in 1915.[349]
Minneapolis has hosted theatrical performances since the end of the American Civil War.[355] Early theaters included
Pence Opera House, the Academy of Music, Grand Opera House, Lyceum, and later the Metropolitan Opera House, which opened in 1894.[356] Fifteen of the fifty-five Twin Cities theater companies counted in 2015 by Peg Guilfoyle had a physical site in Minneapolis. About half the remainder performed in variable spaces throughout the metropolitan area.[357]
In his social history of
American regional theater, Joseph Zeigler calls the
Guthrie Theater the "granddaddy" of regional theater.[358]Tyrone Guthrie founded the Guthrie in 1963 with an inventive
thrust stage—a collaboration by Guthrie, designer
Tanya Moiseiwitsch, and architect
Ralph Rapson[359]—jutting into the seats and surrounded by the audience on three sides.[360] French architect
Jean Nouvel designed a new Guthrie that opened in 2006 overlooking the Mississippi River.[360] The design team reproduced the thrust stage with some alterations, and they added a
proscenium stage and an experimental stage.[360]
Philanthropy and charitable giving have been part of the Minneapolis community since the 1800s.[378] According to
AmeriCorps, in 2017,[q] Minneapolis–Saint Paul, with 46.3 percent of the population volunteering, had the highest proportion of volunteers among US cities.[379]Catholic Charities of Minneapolis and Saint Paul is one of the largest non-profit organizations in the state, and a provider of several social services.[380]
A decades-old
NGO with a $75 million annual budget located in Minneapolis,[381]Alight helps millions of refugees in Africa and Asia with water, shelter, and economic support.[382]
After the flight to the suburbs began in the 1950s,
streetcar service ended citywide.[399]
One of the largest urban
food deserts in the US developed on the north side of Minneapolis, where as of mid-2017, 70,000 people had access to only two grocery stores.[400] When
Aldi closed in 2023, the area again became a food desert with two full-service grocers.[401] The nonprofit Appetite for Change sought to improve the diet of residents, competing against an influx of fast-food stores,[402] and by 2017 it administered ten gardens, sold produce in the mid-year months at West Broadway Farmers Market, supplied its restaurants, and gave away boxes of fresh produce.[403]
Conceived in Minneapolis as a malted milkshake in candy form, the
Milky Way bar of
nougat, caramel, and chocolate was made in the North Loop neighborhood during the 1920s.[409] Both purported originators of the
Jucy Lucy burger—the
5-8 Club and
Matt's Bar—have served it since the 1950s.[410]East African cuisine arrived in Minneapolis with the wave of migrants from Somalia that started in the 1990s.[411] The Herbivorous Butcher opened in 2016; the shop offers natural alternatives to meat that were described by CBS News as "meat-free meat" from the "first vegan 'butcher' shop in the United States".[412]
Annual events
Each January and February, a series of events called The Great Northern is held in Minneapolis.[413] The series includes the annual
U.S. Pond Hockey Championships on
Lake Nokomis;[414] and the City of Lakes Loppet, a 13-mile (21-kilometer) or 26-mile (42-kilometer) cross-country ski race that is part of the American
ski marathon series.[415]
The 1,750,000-square-foot (163,000 m2)
U.S. Bank Stadium was built for the Vikings at a cost of $1.122 billion, $348million of which was provided by the state of Minnesota and $150million by the city of Minneapolis. The stadium, which was called "Minnesota's biggest-ever public works project", opened in 2016 with 66,000 seats, which was expanded to 70,000 for the
2018 Super Bowl.[441] U.S. Bank Stadium also hosts indoor running and rollerblading nights.[442]
Six
golf courses are located within the Minneapolis city limits.[443] While living in Minneapolis, Scott and Brennan Olson founded and later sold
Rollerblade, the company that popularized the sport of
inline skating.[444]
Landscape architect
Horace Cleveland's "crowning achievement" is the Minneapolis park system.[445] In the 1880s, he preserved geographical landmarks and linked them with boulevards and parkways.[446] In their introduction to a modern reprint of Cleveland's treatise on
landscape architecture, Nadenicek and Neckar add that "Cleveland was successful in Minneapolis in great measure because he operated with kindred spirits" like
William Watts Folwell and
Charles M. Loring.[447] In his book The American City: What Works, What Doesn't,
Alexander Garvin wrote Minneapolis built "the best-located, best-financed, best-designed, and best-maintained public open space in America".[448]
The city's parks are governed and operated by the independent
Minneapolis Park and Recreation Boardpark district.[449] Beyond its network of 185 neighborhood parks,[450] the park board owns the city's canopy of trees,[451] and nearly all land that borders the city's waterfronts.[452] The park board owns property outside the city limits including the Eloise Butler Wildflower Garden and Bird Sanctuary which is part of its largest park,
Theodore Wirth Park, shared with
Golden Valley, Minnesota.[453]
Theodore Wirth, park superintendent from 1906 to 1935, built parkways for the automobile, dredged lakes, sculpted land, and managed details of park expansion.[454] Superintendent in the 1960s and 1970s,
Robert W. Ruhe created neighborhood parks and recreation centers in hitherto underserved areas.[455] In 2022, 500 participants[456] ages 14 to 24 served as
Teen Teamworks recruits for on-the-job training in
green careers[457] or as future park employees.[458]
As of 2020, approximately 15 percent of land in Minneapolis is parks, in accordance with the national median, and 98 percent of residents live within one-half mile (0.8 km) of a park.[459] The city's
Chain of Lakes, consisting of seven lakes and Minnehaha Creek, is connected by bicycle paths, and running and walking paths, and is used for swimming, fishing, picnics, boating, and ice skating. A parkway for cars, a
bikeway for riders, and a walkway for pedestrians[460] run parallel along the 51-mile (82 km) route of the
Grand Rounds National Scenic Byway.[461] Parks are interlinked in many places, and the
Mississippi National River and Recreation Area connects regional parks and visitor centers.[462] Among walks and hikes running along the Mississippi River, the five-mile (8 km), hiking-only
Winchell Trail offers views of and access to the
Mississippi Gorge and a rustic hiking experience.[463]
Cleveland lobbied for a park on the riverfront to include the city's other waterfall.[464] In 1889,
George A. Brackett arranged financing, and his associate Henry Brown paid the state to cover the condemnation of surrounding land.[465] The 53-foot (16 m) waterfall
Minnehaha Falls is one of Minnesota's first state parks.[466] The falls became what historian Mary Lethert Wingerd calls a "civic emblem", appearing on products and in placenames.[467]
Minneapolis's climate provides opportunities for winter activities such as
ice fishing,
snowshoeing,
ice skating,
cross-country skiing, and
sledding at many parks and lakes between December and March.[468] Scaling back on skate rental and warming houses since the COVID-19 pandemic, as of 2021, the park board maintained 20 outdoor
ice rinks in winter.[469]
The
Minneapolis City Council has 13 members who represent the city's 13 wards.[476] In 2021, a
ballot question shifted more weight from the city council to the mayor, a change that proponents had tried to achieve since the early 20th century.[477] The mayor and city council now share responsibility for the city's finances.[478] The city's primary source of funding is property tax,[479] and there is a sales tax of 9.03 percent[480] on purchases made within the city, which is a combination of state, county, special district taxes, a city sales tax of 0.50 percent, and a local use tax for out-of-state purchases.[481][482] The
Park and Recreation Board is an independent city department with nine elected commissioners who levy their own taxes, subject to city charter limits.[449] The Board of Estimation and Taxation, which oversees city levies, is also an independent department.[483]
The restructured mayor's role created a new Minneapolis Office of Community Safety, with its commissioner overseeing the police and fire departments, 911 dispatch, emergency management, and violence prevention.[484] In 2023, the city renewed[485] a pilot cooperation with the police department and a mental health services company,
Canopy Mental Health & Consulting, to respond to some 911 calls that do not require police.[486]
After the
murder of George Floyd in May 2020, about 166 police officers left of their own accord either to retirement or to temporary leave—many with
PTSD[487]—and a crime wave resulted in more than 500 shootings.[488] A
Reuters investigation found that killings surged when a "hands-off" attitude resulted in fewer officer-initiated encounters.[489] Violent crime rose three percent across Minneapolis in July 2022 compared with 2021,[490] and in 2020, it rose 21 percent compared to the average of the previous five years.[491] Violent crime was down for 2022 in every category except assaults. Carjackings, gunshots fired, gunshot wounds, and robberies decreased, and homicides were down 20 percent compared to the previous year.[492]
In 2023, the
US Justice Department (DOJ) proposed 28 immediate "remedial" steps as it completed its investigation of the city's policing practices.[493] Among DOJ findings, Minneapolis police officers routinely used excessive force, discriminated against people, and, with the city, violated people's rights.[494] In 2022, the
Minnesota Department of Human Rights completed its two-year investigation of the police department[495] that found a "pattern or practice of race discrimination in violation of the Minnesota Human Rights Act".[496] The state stipulated that the federal decree would take precedence in the case of conflicts, and city leaders sought one monitor to oversee both, to assure a single measure of compliance.[493] The 2023 city budget planned for one negotiated
consent decree, and the statutory minimum of 731 officers in the police department, which had been short of that minimum.[497]
In 2015, the city council passed a resolution making
fossil fuel divestment city policy,[498] joining 17 cities worldwide in the
Carbon Neutral Cities Alliance. Minneapolis's
climate plan calls for an 80 percent reduction in
greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.[499] In 2021, the city council voted unanimously to abolish its required minimum number of parking spaces for new construction.[500] Minneapolis has a separation ordinance that directs local law-enforcement officers not to "take any law enforcement action" for the sole purpose of finding
undocumented immigrants, nor to ask an individual about his or her immigration status.[501]
Education
Primary and secondary
Volunteer missionaries,[502] the
Pond brothers received permission from the US Indian agency[503] at Fort Snelling in 1834 to teach new farming techniques and a new religion to Chief
Cloud Man and his community on the east shore of Bde Maka Ska.[317] That year, J. D. Stevens and the Ponds built an Indian mission near Lake Harriet, which was the first educational institution in Minneapolis.[317] When more settlers moved to the area, by 1874, ten school buildings served nearly 4,000 students. The city of Minneapolis joined with St. Anthony and by 1922, together they enrolled 70,000 students.[504]
Minneapolis Public Schools served 28,689
K–12 students as of October 2022,[506] in more than fifty schools, divided between community and
magnet.[507] As of 2023, enrollment was declining about 1.5 percent per year, and approximately 60 percent of school age children attended district schools.[506] Many students enrolled in alternatives such as charter schools, of which the city has thirty as of 2023.[508] By state law, charter schools are open to all students and are tuition free.[509] In 2022, about 1200 at-risk students attended district Contract Alternative Schools.[510]
The public school district adopted a comprehensive district design beginning with the 2020–2021 school year to address academics, equity, financial sustainability, and to end disadvantages for students of color and students from low-income neighborhoods. The design changed student placement, changed the boundaries for almost all schools, moved magnet schools to central locations and narrowed the magnet types, standardized many start times to improve bus service, and gave every student a community elementary and middle school in their neighborhood. Students may attend a community school by request and be accepted to the school in their neighborhood. Students entered a lottery to be enrolled in a magnet school.[507] Eight high schools had school-based clinics with a doctor, nurses, a mental health counselor, and a registered dietitian.[511] School district demographics differed from the city's. White students made up 41 percent, Black students 35 percent, Hispanic 14 percent, and 5 percent each were Asian and Native American.[512]English-language learners were about 17 percent,[512] in a district that spoke 100 languages at home.[513] About 15 percent were
special education students.[512] As of fall 2023, every Minneapolis public school student receives one free breakfast and one free lunch each school day.[514] In 2022, the district's graduation rate was 77 percent, an improvement of three percent over the previous year.[515]
The
University of Minnesota Twin Cities campus is headquartered in Minneapolis.[516] With more than 50,000 students in 2023, it is the sixth largest campus in the US by enrollment.[517] College rankings for 2023 place the school in the range of 44th[518] (2022) to 185th for academics worldwide.[517][516]QS found a decline in rank over a decade.[516]Shanghai found excellence in ecology, business management, library & information science, and biotechnology.[518] Among the 2,000 schools U.S. News & World Report compared in its 2022–2023 best global universities rankings, the University of Minnesota was 57th.[519] The state's
land-grant university,[520] the school has unusual autonomy that has existed in Minnesota since 1858, when the state constitution included the provision:
regents are in control, independent of city government.[521]
The city has more than twenty-five licensed career schools. These institutions offer short term training, some diplomas, and certificates in a wide variety of fields including business, yoga, pilates, portfolio development, CompTIA certification, floral design, cosmetology, construction, healthcare, information technology, and for those who wish to become a personal trainer, ophthalmic technician, or phlebotomy technician.[531]
In 2023,
Nielsen found the Minneapolis–Saint Paul area to be the 15th largest
designated market area, down from 14th in 2022.[549] About 75 radio stations may be heard in the Minneapolis market, some of them distantly.[550] The Twin Cities have 1,742,530 TV homes.[551]TV Guide lists 151 TV channels for Minneapolis.[552]
The 2020 census found that the average commute to work for the Minneapolis population was 22 minutes.[554] The most common means of transportation to work was driving alone (45 percent), the least common was bicycling (1.7 percent), and others were carpooling (6.5 percent), taking public transit (5.6 percent), and walking (4.8 percent).[554]
A division of the
Metropolitan Council,
Metro Transit operates public transportation in the Minneapolis–Saint Paul metropolitan area.[555] The system has two
light rail lines, one
commuter rail line, about six
bus rapid transit (BRT) lines,[556] and about 90
bus lines with over 8,000 stops.[557] As of 2021, riders of Metro Transit system-wide were 44 percent persons of color.[558] Bus ridership in the Twin Cities was 91.6 million in 2019, a three-percent decline over the previous year and part of a national trend in falling local bus ridership, while commuter rides were down, and ridership on light rail and BRTs remained steady or grew slightly.[559]
The
Metro Blue Line light rail line connects the
Mall of America and
Minneapolis–Saint Paul International Airport in
Bloomington to downtown, and the
Green Line travels from downtown through the University of Minnesota campus to downtown
Saint Paul. A
Blue Line extension to the northwest suburbs re-entered the planning stages for a new route alignment in 2020.[560] A
Green Line extension is planned to connect downtown with the southwestern suburbs.[r] BRT lines are 25 percent faster than regular bus lines because riders pay before boarding, stops are limited, and sometimes they employ signal prioritization.[562] The newest BRT line, the D Line, runs along one of Minnesota's most used bus lines, the 18-mile (29 km) route5, where a quarter of households do not have access to a car.[562] The 40-mile (64 km)
Northstar Commuter rail runs from
Big Lake, Minnesota, to downtown Minneapolis. Commuter rides decreased during the COVID-19 pandemic, and as of 2023, service cut back to four from 12 daily trips.[563]
Hundreds of homeless people nightly sought shelter on Green Line trains until overnight service was cut back in 2019.[564] Short more than a hundred police officers, in 2022, the Metro Council hired community groups to help police light rail stations; these non-profits can guide passengers to mental health services and shelters.[565] In 2023, crime in the Metro Transit system spiked 32% over the previous January, but for the year, ridership was up 15% to about 60% of the pre-pandemic level.[565]
Evie Carshare, owned by Minneapolis and Saint Paul since 2022, is a fleet of 145 electric cars available for one-way trips in a 35-square-mile (91 km2) area of the Twin Cities.[566]
In 2007, the
Interstate 35W bridge over the Mississippi, which was overloaded with 300 short tons (270,000 kg) of repair materials, collapsed, killing 13 people and injuring 145. The
bridge was rebuilt in 14 months.[570]
The
Minneapolis Skyway System, 9.5 miles (15.3 km) of enclosed pedestrian bridges called
skyways, links 80 city blocks downtown with access to second-floor restaurants, retailers, government, sports facilities, doctor's offices and other businesses that are open on weekdays.[571]
Xcel Energy supplies electricity,[576] and
CenterPoint Energy provides gas.[576] The water supply is managed by four
watershed districts that correspond with the Mississippi and three streams that are river tributaries.[577]
The city has nineteen
fire stations.[578] Requests for non-emergency information or service requests can be made through Minneapolis
311. The call center operates in English, Spanish, Hmong, and Somali, and offers 220 language options.[579] Email, TTY, text, voice, and a mobile app can access the center.[580]
The Minneapolis Department of Public Works is responsible for services including snow plowing, solid waste removal, traffic and parking, water treatment, transportation planning and maintenance, and fleet services for the city.[581] Among its engineering functions, the department was increasing the capacity of a 4,200-foot (1,300 m)
storm water tunnel system 80 feet (24 m) under Washington to Chicago Avenues, and had completed 97 percent of the excavation phase and 41 percent of the lining phase as of August 2023.[582] Designed for downtown's concrete landscape, the system will drain runoff into the Mississippi in case of a
100-year storm.[583]
Downtown Improvement District ambassadors, who are identified by their blue-and-green-yellow fluorescent jackets, daily patrol a 120-block area of downtown to greet and assist visitors, remove trash, monitor property, and call police when they are needed. The ambassador program is a
public-private partnership that is paid for by a special downtown tax district.[584]
Cardiac surgery was developed at the university's Variety Club Heart Hospital,[587] where by 1957, more than 200 patients—most of whom were children—had survived open-heart operations.[588] Working with surgeon
C. Walton Lillehei,
Medtronic began to build portable and implantable
cardiac pacemakers about this time.[589]
Hennepin Healthcare, a public
teaching hospital and
Level I trauma center,[590] opened in 1887 as City Hospital, and has been known as Minneapolis General Hospital, Hennepin County General Hospital, and Hennepin County Medical Center or HCMC.[591]
In 2021, opioid overdoses killed 197 people in Minneapolis.[592] For the state in 2021, Black persons were three times and Native American persons were ten times more likely to die from an opioid overdose than White persons.[593] The mayor's proposed 2024 budget adds funds for the Turning Point treatment center, that provides care specifically for African Americans.[594] The
Red Lake Band of Chippewa is building a culturally sensitive treatment center for opioid and fentanyl addiction. Minneapolis transferred two city-owned properties to the Red Lake Nation for the facility.[595][596]
The Mashkiki Waakaa'igan Pharmacy—funded by the
Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa—dispenses free prescription drugs and culturally sensitive care to members of any federally recognized tribes living in Hennepin and Ramsey counties, regardless of insurance status.[597]
^Tom Weber gives five nations: Dakota, Ojibway, Ho-Chunk, Cheyenne, Báxoje (Ioway).[19] Randy Furst of the
Star Tribune gives seven: Dakota, Ojibway, Ho-Chunk, Cheyenne, Ioway, Cree, Assiniboine.[20] The
League of Women Voters counts eleven tribes (rather than nations).[21]
^The University of Minnesota Dakota Dictionary Online requires a Dakota font to read special characters.[29] Here, Dakota to Latin alphabet transliteration is borrowed from
Lerner Publishing in Minneapolis.[30]
^Because President Thomas Jefferson had not authorized Pike's trip, which was made at the behest of
James Wilkinson, the new governor of the Louisiana territory, Pike did not have the authority to make a treaty.[35] Pike valued the land at $200,000 in his journal but omitted the value in Article 2 of the treaty. Pike gave the chiefs 60 US gallons (230 L) of liquor and $200 in gifts at the signing.[36] In 1808, the US Senate authorized one hundredth of Pike's estimate and added acreage,[36] paying $2,000 for the land in 1819.[37]
^In the 1851
Treaty of Traverse des Sioux and
Treaty of Mendota, the US took all Dakota land west of the Mississippi,[46] about 24 million acres (97,000 km2),[47] in exchange for a 10-mile (16 km) wide reservation on the Minnesota River[48] and about $3 million ($106 million in 2022). Ater expenses, the Dakota were promised fifty years of annuities in goods[49] and interest on $1,360,000 and $1,410,000; the US kept the principal.[50] The Dakota could not read English, and their interpreters worked for the US.[45] In Mendota, negotiator
Wakute said he feared signing a treaty because the prior treaty was changed from the one he had signed.[51] Indeed, the US Congress ratified amendments after the fact, and refused to consider payment unless the Dakota agreed to their new terms—in 1852 Congress struck the reservation from the final treaty.[52] Negotiators
Luke Lea and
Alexander Ramsey had promised the Dakota they would prosper, and rushed the transaction.[53] The chiefs were asked to sign a third paper in 1851—onlookers assumed it was a third copy of the treaty[54]—that Ramsey later declared was a "solemn acknowledgment" of the Dakota's debt to traders.[55] Ramsey, as territorial governor, enforced the trader's paper, distributing the monies to himself,
Henry Sibley, and their friends.[56]
^Part of the delay was a month's indecision in the US Treasury about appropriating gold or greenbacks and in Congress, which was preoccupied with Civil War finance. Gold arrived in the region just a few hours after settlers had been killed and war had begun.[67]
^In
Atwater's history, Baldwin gives the Sioux word as Minne.[82]Riggs gives mini.[83]Williamson who was most familiar with
Santee has Mini, and in the
Yankton dialect, mni.[84] Here, mni is from the University of Minnesota Dakota Dictionary Online.[85]
^"Minneapolis would be the nation's flour capital for 50 years." and "Begun in 1848, timber milling had lasted for almost 50 years."[91]
^These mills were the first built for commerce. Earlier, soldiers from Fort Snelling built a sawmill in 1820, and a grist mill in 1823, on the west bank near the falls.[93][94]
^The computer industry in Minnesota began in 1946, when work in Washington, DC, and Ohio transferred to Saint Paul, where
Engineering Research Associates was founded.[151]
^Control Data moved office in 1962, at the request of chief designer
Seymour Cray, to Cray's hometown of
Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin, to give fewer distractions[154] as he and colleagues built the
CDC 6600, generally called the first
supercomputer. Corporate offices remained in Minneapolis until 1960 when they moved to the suburbs.[155]
^Separately, Myers describes how the Minneapolis police department's adoption of CODEFOR in 1998 increased policing in areas of Minneapolis that were disproportionately nonwhite, with dual results: "Minority residents are afforded improved safety and law enforcement services; minority offenders unsurprisingly may be disproportionately apprehended for relatively minor transgressions in order to achieve the higher levels of safety."[215]
^In a 1975 article, reporter John Carman said the city's highest point is 967 feet (295 m) at Deming Heights Park in the
Waite Park neighborhood.[229] The
US Geological Survey lists the highest elevation as 980 feet (300 m) but does not give a location.[228] Geography professor John Tichy said the highest point is the site of Waite Park Elementary School at approximately 985 feet (300 m) above sea level.[230] All of the cited sources that list locations say the highest point is within the
Northeast section of the city.
^Mean monthly maxima and minima (i.e., the highest and lowest temperature readings during an entire month or year) calculated based on data at the said location from 1991 to 2020.
^Official records for Minneapolis/Saint Paul were kept by the Saint Paul Signal Service in that city from January 1871 to December 1890, the Minneapolis Weather Bureau from January 1891 to April 8, 1938, and at Minneapolis–St. Paul International Airport (KMSP) since April 9, 1938.[253]
^Americorps, formerly known as the Corporation for National and Community Service, has had no information for volunteer rates in Minneapolis–Saint Paul since 2017.
^About a decade late, the Southwest line is expected to open in 2027, and has cost $1.8billion as of 2022.[561]
^Thompson, Derek (March 2015).
"The Miracle of Minneapolis". The Atlantic.
Archived from the original on May 25, 2023. Retrieved April 28, 2023. By spreading the wealth to its poorest neighborhoods, the metro area provides more-equal services in low-income places, and keeps quality of life high just about everywhere.
^Weber 2022, p. 4, "The overarching goal is to take what may be the most significant issue facing contemporary Minneapolis—the crippling disparities among its people, exposed to the world in 2020, after the murder of George Floyd—and present a history that examines why those disparities exist, even as the city makes a legitimate argument for itself as a must-see or must-live kind of place.".
^Westerman & White 2012, pp. 3–4, "William H. Keating, a geologist who came to the Minnesota area on an exploratory expedition in 1823, observed, 'The Dacotas have no tradition of having ever emigrated, from any other place, to the spot on which they now reside...'.
^Wingerd 2010, p. xvi, "...this intercultural fur trade society flourished, shifting only gradually, over generations, from reciprocity to exploitation. ...hard-pressed traders increasingly discarded long-respected customs of generosity with Indian hunters for more exploitive practices. ...In no time, land and timber replaced pelts as the region's most valuable resources".
^Anderson 2019, p. x, "...research led to the discovery that the founding fathers of Minnesota were in fact thieves who took hundreds of thousands of dollars from the Dakota people, money that Indian leaders knew was being stolen".
^Anderson 2019, p. 73, "The scams often went like this".
^Wingerd 2010, p. 203, "Ramsey's great project to open Minnesota had ended in a sorry spectacle of deceit, coercion, and promises broken almost before they were recorded".
^"Treaties".
Minnesota Historical Society. July 31, 2012.
Archived from the original on August 15, 2021. Retrieved June 1, 2021. These treaties, which were almost wholly dishonored by the U.S. government...
^"mni". University of Minnesota Dakota Dictionary Online.
University of Minnesota.
Archived from the original on October 13, 2022. Retrieved October 13, 2022.
^Risjord 2005, p. 131, "By then, however, the pine woods were virtually exhausted".
^Lass 2000, p. 180, Here, Lass calls the lumbermen's actions as cutting at a "rapacious rate", and calls out a "rapacious assault on the coniferous forests" on page 196.
^Lass 2000, p. 238, "The anticipated decline came rather abruptly during the 1920s. By the end of that decade the Mill City produced only slightly more than half as much flour as it had at its zenith, and ranked third after Buffalo and Kansas City, Missouri.".
^Stipanovich 1982, p. 104, "Thus while Minneapolis began to lose jobs in the mills, it began to acquire other jobs in management, financial administration, advertising, market research, product research and design, and other mid-level management and administrative positions. The effect was to upgrade the workforce...".
^Stipanovich 1982, p. 111, "The university's role became more and more important as the 20th century rolled along...".
^"1919–2019 History: 100 years and counting".
Cummins.
Archived from the original on July 28, 2023. Retrieved June 4, 2023. [In 1986] Cummins purchases a 63 percent share of the Onan Corporation. The remainder is acquired in 1992, making it a fully owned subsidiary for power systems.
^Ladd-Taylor 2005, p. 242, "
Eitel, the founder of the private Eitel Hospital and a vice-president of Dight's eugenics society, performed the first 150 surgeries; his nephew George D. Eitel took over the work after the old man died in 1928".
^Walker et al. 2023, p. 6, "The first racial covenant in Minneapolis was recorded by Edmund Walton in 1910...".
^Delegard & Ehrman-Solberg 2017, pp. 73–74, "...the Seven Oaks Corporation, a real estate developer that inserted this same language into thousands of deeds across the city.".
^Walker et al. 2023, p. 5, "...the Mapping Prejudice team showed that, prior to the introduction of covenants in 1910, the residences of people of color were dispersed throughout the city, yet as developers added thousands of racial covenants to deeds in Minneapolis until 1955, the city's neighborhoods became increasingly racially segregated".
^Weber 2022, p. 141, "Explaining the name,
Clyde Bellecourt remembered Alberta Downwind saying at AIM's founding: Indian is the word that they used to oppress us. Indian is the word we'll use to gain our freedom".
^"Same-Sex Marriage in Minnesota". Minnesota Issues Resource Guides. Minnesota Legislative Reference Library. July 2022.
Archived from the original on June 5, 2023. Retrieved June 5, 2023.
^Mitchell 2022, p. 44, "Two years have passed since Floyd was killed, but the site where he died...continues to be contested space—an ongoing site of protest—but also a sacred location".
^Waxman, Olivia B. (June 2, 2020).
"George Floyd's Death and the Long History of Racism in Minneapolis". Time.
Archived from the original on November 17, 2022. Retrieved November 17, 2022. Delegard told Time, 'Structural racism is really baked into the geography of this city and as a result it really permeates every institution in this city.'
^"Goals: 1. Eliminate disparities". Department of Community Planning & Economic Development. City of Minneapolis.
Archived from the original on November 17, 2022. Retrieved November 17, 2022. ...in 2010, Minneapolis led the nation in having the widest unemployment disparity between African-American and white residents. This remains true in 2018. And disparities also exist in nearly every other measurable social aspect, including of economic, housing, safety and health outcomes, between people of color and indigenous people compared with white people." and "In Minneapolis, 83 percent of white non-Hispanics have more than a high school education, compared with 47 percent of black people and 45 percent of American Indians. Only 32 percent of Hispanics have more than a high school education.
^"Goals: 1. Eliminate disparities". Department of Community Planning & Economic Development. City of Minneapolis.
Archived from the original on November 17, 2022. Retrieved June 22, 2023.
^Factors outlined include racial gaps in opportunity, limited pre-school subsidy programs, educator bias, differences in families' and schools' economic resources, less-experienced teachers, and completion rate gaps. Grunewald, Rob; Horowitz, Ben; Ky, Kim-Eng; Tchourumoff, Alene (January 11, 2021).
Minnesota's education system shows persistent opportunity gaps by race (Report).
Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis.
Archived from the original on June 18, 2023. Retrieved June 18, 2023. This article highlights evidence of how systemic racism undermines the education system in Minnesota.
^"Physical Environment". City of Minneapolis. p. 39.
Archived from the original on February 10, 2023. Retrieved January 12, 2021.
^Water Resources Management Plan(PDF) (Report). City of Minneapolis. December 14, 2021. pp. 3–14, ES-4.
Archived(PDF) from the original on April 6, 2023. Retrieved April 6, 2023.
^Water Resources Management Plan(PDF) (Report). City of Minneapolis. December 14, 2021. p. 3-1.
Archived(PDF) from the original on April 6, 2023. Retrieved April 6, 2023.
^Albert 1981, p. 561, "...Minneapolis received by far the greater share (see Table 30.2). Camp Savage and Fort Snelling, the greatest magnets for wives, relatives, and friends of those stationed there, were more accessible from Minneapolis than from St. Paul".
^Weber 2022, p. 159: "President Donald Trump's executive order in 2017 banned new immigration from Somalia and several other majority-Muslim nations. Just forty-eight people came to Minnesota from Somalia in 2018, down from more than fourteen hundred in 2016," and further reading p. 187.
^Millett 2007, pp. 159–160, "Christ Church was Saarinen's last building" and "the addition was among Eero's last commissions".
^
abHalvorsen Ludt, Tamara; Fritz, Laurel; Anderson, Lauren (June 2020).
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Archived(PDF) from the original on September 22, 2022. Retrieved July 14, 2022.
^Whitmore 2004, Whitmore cites a 1903 article in the New York Herald, "...the gallery is open to the public six days in the week, and all who ring his bell and ask to see the old masters receive not only permission from the white-aproned maid who answers the ring, but also a catalogue as well.".
^Regan, Sheila (February 8, 2022).
"New documentary looks back at Minneapolis' 1970s-era experimental arts program". MinnPost.
Archived from the original on April 22, 2023. Retrieved April 22, 2023. FITC began as a program offered through the Minneapolis Public Schools, under the umbrella of the Urban Arts Program....(Among the notable alumni of the Urban Arts program was none other than Prince himself.)
^Roise, Charlene; Gales, Elizabeth; Koehlinger, Kristen; Goetz, Kathryn; Hess, Roise and Company; Zschomler, Kristen; Rouse, Stephanie; Wittenberg, Jason (December 2018).
Minneapolis Music History, 1850–2000: A Context(PDF) (Report). City of Minneapolis. p. 42.
Archived(PDF) from the original on May 15, 2023. Retrieved May 1, 2023. A true musical prodigy, Prince mastered the piano by about age eight while living at 2620 Eighth Avenue North, where he could play anything he heard by ear on the piano and began songwriting.
^Atmosphere (January 4, 2005). "I Wish Those Cats @ Fobia Would Give Me Some Free Shoes" and "Sep Seven Game Show Them" and "7th St. Entry" on Headshots: SE7EN remastered
Rhymesayers, ASIN: B0006SSRXS [Explicit lyrics].
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the original on June 25, 2018. Retrieved March 25, 2018.
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Archived from the original on December 6, 2023. Retrieved March 18, 2024.
^
abMaya, Cynthia (June 15, 2022).
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^Nadenicek & Neckar 2002, p.
xxxix, "With other societal superintendents influenced by the ideals of New England, Cleveland was later able to design and implement his crowning achievement, the Minneapolis Park System.".
^Nadenicek & Neckar 2002, pp.
xli, "Cleveland successfully linked boulevards, small neighborhood parks of Parisian derivation, prairie ponds with wild islands, and lake-edge parkways".
^Smith 2008, p. 73, "Today, many Minneapolitans think of Wirth as the man who created the Minneapolis park system. In fact, he did not—but he greatly improved it".
^Smith 2008, pp. 175, 184, 192–194, Ruhe stopped the state from building a highway through
Minnehaha Park, a conflict that the park board appealed to and won in the
US Supreme Court. During Ruhe's tenure, the board learned to accommodate growing public participation, and it became an environmental steward when faced with
Dutch elm disease and improving
water quality..
Anfinson, John O.; Madigan, Thomas; Forsberg, Drew M.; Nunnally, Patrick (2003). "St. Anthony Falls: Timber, Flour and Electricity".
River of history: a historic resources study. St. Paul District,
U.S. Corps of Engineers. Retrieved April 21, 2023 – via US National Park Service.
The Minneapolis '76 Bicentennial Commission (1976). Minneapolis Frontiers, Firsts & Futures: A Bicentennial Commemorative Guide to the History of the City of Minneapolis. The Minneapolis '76 Bicentennial Commission.
OCLC3804178.{{
cite book}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (
link)
Murray, Charles J. (1997). The Supermen: The Story of Seymour Cray and the Technical Wizards behind the Supercomputer.
John Wiley & Sons.
ISBN0-471-04885-2.
Nadenicek, Daniel J.; Neckar, Lance M. (April 2002) [1873]. Introduction. Landscape Architecture, as Applied to the Wants of the West; with an Essay on Forest Planting on the Great Plains. By
Cleveland, H. W. S.University of Massachusetts Press in association with Library of American Landscape History.
ISBN978-1-55849-330-8.
Wright, H. E. Jr. (1990).
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Archived(PDF) from the original on April 20, 2021. Retrieved November 16, 2020 – via South Washington Watershed District.