On Tuesday, July 22, 2003, at 11:20 PM, Chris Johnson wrote:
Dyna grouses about a lot of things, but grousing about the geography of Minneapolis has got to be the one of the most ridiculous things I've read in a long time.
The glaciers were pretty much equal opportunity earth movers, and the Northside had about as many bodies of water as the Northside and Northeast until the two legged earth movers started mucking about.
Gol' darn those glaciers thousands of years ago! Why, those ice crystals must have beeb bigotted, wealthy ice crystals because they gouged out more lakes in south Minneapolis, and then when they melted, the darn water formed creeks and valleys there.
You give the glaciers way too much credit, and forget that Lake of the Isles is a dredged swamp, and it's spoils were used to fill in the lake in Columbia Park and Shoreham Yards.
Railroads were pretty much built where they were needed, where the ground made it easy to build them and where they could get the land. Ft. Snelling owned all the land up to St. Anthony Falls when the city got going. Maybe the fact that North is higher and dryer than much of the South had something to do with it? Much easier to build on dry ground. What about the rail yards in Northeast? Downtown Gateway district? Seward?
South Minneapolis is nice and flat and pretty much high ground, so why did the railroads pretty much avoid it?
That's a revisionist history.
Loring Park was built on top of what was the tamarack bog fed by Bassett Creek and was dedicated as "Central Park" on May 5, 1883 -- after the bog was carved up and carted away during the winter. It was renamed to Loring Park in 1890.
Thank you for reminding me of that slight- while the aristocrats dredged themselves a neat little pond in Loring Park they filled our little pond on 33rd Avenue and Oak Lake as well.
In the wake of a severe flood in the spring of 1913, flood control projects on Bassett Creek were started. Construction started late in 1913 on putting part of the river underground. The consturction halted during World War I and it wasn't until 1923 that the creek was buried. Since the population of Minneapolis jumped from 45,000 in 1880 to 129,000 in 1885, and most of the mills in the milling district also predate 1923, it's pretty easy to see that the creek was buried after the factories and warehouses, not so that they could be built.
Bassett Creek was gradually confined, starting from the river west. Take a look at the plat maps and you will see several commercial buildings sitting right atop the creek- evidence that commercial development in this are was still underway at the time the creek was confined.
The growing population of the region is also responsible for virtually all of the flood plain of Bassett Creek being filled with 10 to 15 feet of fill, and lots of now expensive real estate being built on top of that, and not just in Minneapolis.
Yes, the Heritage Park area is polluted. Yes, it should have been cleaned up long ago and certainly before the Heritage Park projects. But slamming people who live south of a downtown east-west line, in the Lowry Hill, Kenwood and Loring neighborhoods, using epithets liks WASP artistocracy, and impugning the Lowry, Pillsbury and Washburn families is hardly a productive solution.
I wish environmental racism was only a historic artifact. But sadly I read in another post that our Mayor is concerned about the smell of an upscale south side lake. I wish he were as concerned about not only the smell but the potential health threat that people of color now face on the near Northside since the Heritage Park development struck "oil".
holding the high ground in Hawthorne,
Dyna Sluyter
TEMPORARY REMINDER: 1. Don't feed the troll! Ignore obvious flame-bait. 2. If you don't like what's being discussed here, don't complain - change the subject (Mpls-specific, of course.)
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