A dogleg portion also extends to the southeast along the Mississippi River to include cities such as Hastings.
This was intended as a long-term solution, but within a year, the proliferation of cell phones and pagers brought 612 back to the brink of exhaustion.
It soon became apparent that the Twin Cities were growing far too quickly to stay in a single area code, forcing the creation of 651.
An exception is the eastern half of the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities' campus, located in Falcon Heights.
[1] Even with the split into four area codes (612, 651, 763 and 952), most of the Twin Cities region is still a single rate center.