City of Lakes | CW Hawes

There is just about everything available for the Minneapolitan and the visitor to do in Minneapolis and the surrounding area. Which is why ace PI, Justinia Wright, is proud to call Minneapolis her home. And if one wishes to venture further there is the gorgeous North Shore of Lake Superior; Duluth, with its locomotive ride and port city allure; the Amish communities near Harmony; and the very artsy town of Lanesboro, which is on the Root River Trail, an extensive trail system in southeastern Minnesota.

Minneapolis and the metro area, however, have plenty to keep one occupied and never bored. If water is what you want, Minneapolis, the City of Lakes, and Minnesota, the Land of 10,000 Lakes, has it. In fact, the Land of 10,000 Lakes has more shoreline than California, Florida, and Hawaii. In Minneapolis alone, there are twenty lakes and wetlands, several of which form the beautiful Chain of Lakes Parkway.

Lake Harriet

Lake Calhoun

Lake of the Isles

There are abundant opportunities for boating, canoeing, swimming, and fishing.

If you like winter activities, there is ice fishing, ice skating, and the ice cycle on Lake Calhoun.

Minneapolis abounds in greenways for walking and biking and has 129 miles of on-street bikeways and 97 miles of off-street bikeways, with plans to add another 40 miles.

Minneapolis has a lot of winter. If you love winter sports, then the city has much to offer. Such as 20 miles of groomed cross-country ski trails to play on. If downhill skiing is your thing, suburban Bloomington has Hyland Hills ski slope and Wild Mountain is only an hour away in Taylors Falls and Spirit Mountain in Duluth is only two and a half hours away.

To be honest, I think most residents of the Twin Cities really love summer. Perhaps because the season is on the short side. And there is plenty to see and do during the summer.

The Minnesota State Fair is the largest state fair in the country by average daily attendance and the second largest in total attendance. And USA Today named the fair the best in the country in 2015. The state fair runs for 12 days in late August and ends on Labor Day. Attendance in 2015 was over 1.8 million.

Other places to visit are the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum (okay, I cheated with a fall pic)

the Minnesota Zoo

Como Park Zoo and Conservatory

and Minnehaha Falls

Believe it or not, Minnesota has a thriving wine industry and wine tastings are a delightful thing to do on a summer day and many wineries are a mere hour drive from Minneapolis. And the wine is really top notch.

Minneapolis boasts over two dozen microbreweries and brew pubs. Eating and drinking has never been so good.

When I moved to Minnesota in 1969, this is what the skyline looked like

The observation deck of the Foshay Tower offered an unparalleled view of the metro area as it was, at 32 stories, the tallest building.

Four years later, the IDS tower was built which at 57 stories and 910 feet is the tallest building in Minneapolis. This what the skyline looked like in 1973.

In the past 43 years a building boom has taken place. This is the skyline today.

The view from the Foshay is still nice, but not like it once was.

There is something for everybody in Minneapolis and the surrounding area. I hope you’ve enjoyed the taste of the City of Lakes I’ve offered these past weeks. We’ve only scratched the surface. And perhaps in the future we’ll investigate further.

Next week, we’ll have a preview of the 4th book in the Justinia Wright, PI series: The Conspiracy Game. Where political mayhem comes to Minneapolis.

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Later this month The Conspiracy Game, the fourth book in the Justinia Wright, PI series, will be published. And to prepare for the book’s release, I am devoting this month’s blog posts to the city of Minneapolis, where Justinia Wright works and plays.

This week we’ll cover a bit of history and some interesting facts about Minneapolis, the bigger half of the Twin Cities.

In 1819, the US army established Ft Snelling where the Minnesota River joins the Mississippi River. The US federal government wanted to make sure the United States was represented in an area claimed by the British and the French, not to mention the native American tribes actually living there.

The next three decades saw various treaties secure the area for the US and a flood of settlers from the east moved in. On the east side of the Mississippi, at St Anthony Falls, in 1849, a townsite was established and the town called St Anthony.

In 1854, on the west side of the falls, another townsite was platted. Suggested names for this town were Albion, All Saints, Lowell, Brooklyn, Addiseville, and Winona — all were rejected. The town’s first schoolmaster, Charles Hoag, is said to have come up with the name Minnehapolis, which he took from Minnehaha, mni (the Dakota word for water), and polis (the Greek word for city). Hoag noted the “h” in Minnehapolis was silent. The townsfolk voted and accepted Hoag’s name, minus the silent “h”.

The territorial legislature, in 1856, officially recognized Minneapolis as a town and in 1867 the town was incorporated as a city.

The first industry, making use of St Anthony Falls to generate power, was lumber and from 1848 to 1887, Minneapolis was the lumber capitol of the US. But it wasn’t lumber that put the city on the world’s radar, it was flour milling. From 1880 to 1930, Minneapolis was the leading mill city in the US and in 1884 passed Budapest as the world’s leading flour miller — which gave Minneapolis the nickname “Mill City”.

Today, the sawmills and flour mills are long gone and the economy has diversified. For a time, Minneapolis was a banking center and an important rail hub. Finance and rail, along with trucking, are still important parts of the city’s economic portfolio, to which have been added industry, healthcare, computers, and high tech. Five Fortune 500 companies call Minneapolis home.

The Minneapple, as the city is sometimes called, is a diverse city. Certainly not on the order of, say, the Big Apple, but diverse nonetheless. In the span of a mere 60 years the city has gone from 98 1/2% German and Scandinavian heritage to over 1/3 of the population being being comprised of a variety of ethnicities. Minneapolis has, for example, the largest Somali community in North America and has hundreds of Somali owned businesses. There are large Asian, Hispanic, and African-American communities as well. The first Muslim elected to the US Congress was African-American lawyer Keith Ellison, representing Minnesota’s 5th Congressional District.

The cultural scene in Minneapolis is alive and well with many artists calling the city home. There are numerous art museums and galleries, theaters and performing groups, orchestras, and musicians in the city. Minneapolis is ranked the third most literate city in the US.

In But Jesus Never Wept (Justinia Wright, PI #3), Tina’s brother, Harry, asks her why she moved from San Francisco to Minneapolis.

Tina put down her book. “What’s wrong with Minneapolis?”

“Too damn cold here.”

“It does get cold. It also gets hot and muggy in the summer and all the lakes are breeding grounds for a zillion mosquitoes. I didn’t come here because of the weather. Every place has its problems. I came here because it is the Midwest and we grew up in the Midwest. I came here because I liked the multi-cultural nature of what is in essence a small city. I have what I grew up with and I have something of what I liked about San Francisco. Minneapolis and St Paul have a little bit of everything. And I like that. They are conservative and liberal all at the same time.”

Minneapolis and her twin, St Paul, do indeed have a little bit of everything. And in the coming weeks we’ll explore more of what makes the City of Lakes a wonderful place to call home.

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