History of Saint Paul, Minnesota
Pierre "Pig's Eye" Parrant, a retired French Canadian fur trader turned bootlegger, was a particular source of irritation to military officers.
In 1838, Parrant moved his bootlegging operation downstream about 5 miles (8.0 km) to Fountain Cave，situated in the north bank of the river near what is now Saint Paul's West Seventh Street neighborhood.
During Upper Cambrian and Ordovician time, from approximately 505[6] to 438 million years ago, shallow tropical seas covered much of then-equatorial southeastern Minnesota.
[8] These units are overlain by the fossiliferous Decorah Shale, which is in some places completely eroded and in others up to 95 feet (29 m) thick, and exposed at the brickyards, a popular fossil hunting location in Lilydale Park.
About 20,000 years ago, the area was covered by the Superior Lobe of the Laurentide Ice Sheet, which left the St. Croix moraine on the Twin Cities as it receded.
[11] These thick layers of ice cut through the Platteville limestone cap rock with tremendous force, forming tunnel valleys, and released glacial meltwater.
Blocked by an ice sheet to the north, the lake water rose until about 9,700 years Before Present (BP), when it overtopped the Big Stone Moraine, a ridge of glacial drift left by the receding glacier, at the location of Browns Valley, Minnesota.
The lake's outflow was catastrophic at times,[15] creating a wide valley to Saint Paul, where the massive River Warren Falls once graced the landscape.
[17] Following the 1837 Treaty of St. Peters, the roughly 200 Dakota living on the bluffs of Saint Paul vacated the area and moved to the west side of the Mississippi River.
In 1850, the city narrowly survived a proposed law to move the capital to Saint Peter when territorial legislator, Joe Rolette disappeared with the approved bill.
German-Jewish pioneers formed Saint Paul's first synagogue in 1856[4] and the German cultural society, Leseverein built Athenaeum, a Deutsches Haus for theatrical productions.
[28] In the early 1850s, the city's one Catholic parish was divided into three factions; the French, German, and Irish groups each held service in their native tongues in one building.
Wealthy businessmen such as James C. Burbank, the owner of the Minnesota Stage Company, which held a statewide monopoly controlling 1,600 miles (2,575 km) of stage-lines by 1865, started to spend their fortunes building grand estates.
On the east side, new immigrants from Sweden with little wealth and few English language skills settled in the ravine of Phalen's Creek, or Swede Hollow.
Castle wrote that the earliest immigrants, primarily from the British Isles, Germany, Scandinavia, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Belgium, and France easily reached the standards expected of them.
[18] Saint Paul's historic Landmark Center, was built in 1902 and originally served as the Federal Court House and Post Office for the Upper Midwest.
Above the southern (main) entrance to the building is a gilded quadriga called the Progress of the State which was sculpted by Daniel Chester French and Edward Clark Potter.
In 1924 the Ford Motor Company opened the Twin Cities Assembly Plant; the site is located on the Mississippi River adjacent to a company-owned dam, which generates hydroelectric power.
Macalester College (1885) had its beginnings due to the efforts of the Reverend Dr. Edward Duffield Neill, who had founded two schools in Saint Paul and nearby Minneapolis which were named after M.W.
The first predecessor of William Mitchell College of Law (1900) was founded by five prominent St. Paulites (Hiram F. Stevens, Ambrose Tighe, Moses Clapp, Thomas D. O'Brien, and Clarence Halbert).
St. Paulites Warren E. Burger and John B. Sanborn, Jr. received their law degrees from William Mitchell, while fellow native Harry Blackmun taught at the school prior to his judicial service.
In 1909 Arlington Hill Lutheran Church was opened on Saint Paul's East Side, ministering in English, rather than the typical Swedish of that time in that neighborhood.
French-Canadians, Irish, and especially Germans lived on the banks and bluffs out of the flood zone; in 1874, the West Side was annexed by the city of Saint Paul.
The tents gradually gave way to small houses and over the subsequent three decades, more refugees joined them, coming from Russia, Lithuania, Poland, Syria, and Lebanon.
After World War I, the flats began to be populated by Mexican-Americans who came to Minnesota to work in meat packing plants and the sugar beet fields, some of whom settled there permanently.
In 1879 the Czech Slovak immigrant community that was based at the intersection of St. Clair and West Seventh Streets purchased a lot at 383 Michigan from a sitting mayor of Saint Paul, William Dawson.
The Saint Paul Public Schools stopped teaching the German language (which had been standard fare), German Christians congregations experienced harassment from the Minnesota National Guard, the 18-foot (5 m) statue of "Germania" was removed from the Germania Life Insurance Company building, sauerkraut was temporarily renamed "Liberty Cabbage," and hamburgers were dubbed Salisbury Steak.
According to Roy Wilkins, Rondo Avenue had been one of the city's best locations, with tree-lined streets and abundant music, emanating from Victrolas, saxophones, and player pianos.
Since the lock and dam system on the Upper Mississippi River was completed in the 1950s, flooding on the West Side flats has become a rarity, and quality housing for low- and middle-income families has been built there.
[18][56][57] As with each ethnic group in Saint Paul's history, the newest immigrants speak their native languages, live in somewhat segregated communities, and start out with few monetary assets.
