Nicollet Island

[2] The island lies in the middle of the Mississippi, crossed by the Hennepin Avenue Bridge connecting Downtown and Northeast Minneapolis.

Before the arrival of European settlers, the Minneapolis region was inhabited by the Sioux (Dakota) and Ojibwe people, to whom Saint Anthony Falls was a sacred site.

[5] The Sioux used the island as a birthing place, and according to their oral tradition for ceremonies such as the vision quest and as a neutral meeting site.

Several settlers tried to obtain the best land near the falls, of whom Fort Snelling's sutler, Franklin Steele, took the best part of the east bank including Nicollet Island.

[8] After Steele obtained proper title to his land in 1848, he turned his energies to building a sawmill at Saint Anthony Falls to cut lumber from upriver, which began operations in September 1848.

Steele platted the townsite of St. Anthony, which became a large city before merging with Minneapolis in 1872, on the east bank of the river.

The bridge was unsound and had limited capacity: photographs show signs that warned of fines for crossing too fast.

[14] The fix was a concrete dike (wall) built by the Corps of Engineers just upstream from the falls all the way across the river from just under the limestone cap down as much as 40 feet (12 m).

Eastman's efforts lead many of the city's Gilded Age wealthy to live on the island, in the later decades of the 19th century.

[19] During the 1960s, David Lerner entered into a long and public dispute with Nicollet Island residents who formed a tenants union.

In the 1970s, the island became a concern of preservationists and was included with the rest of the Saint Anthony Falls district on the National Register of Historic Places.

[18][27][28] The controversies resurfaced when DeLaSalle tried to build a football field,[24] which only went ahead after a ruling by the Minnesota Court of Appeals in 2007.