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Mill City Museum Showcases 'Flour Power' of Minneapolis
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| Mill City Museum |
"Flour power" is the focus of the new Mill City Museum, constructed in the ruins of the 1880 Washburn A Mill, once the centerpiece of the Minneapolis flour empire.
This intriguing museum with strong agricultural ties tells stories about the people who worked in the mills and the major role milling played in developing Minneapolis, which has a history interwoven with Pillsbury, General Mills, Cargill, International Multifoods and Malt-O-Meal, ConAgra and ADM.
An attraction for all ages, Mill City Museum chronicles the flour milling industry that dominated world flour production for roughly a half-century and fueled the growth of Minneapolis, which is still recognized round the world as "Mill City."
Wisconsin farm families may want to take a trip across the Mississippi River this winter to visit this museum that opened its doors in September and celebrate Wisconsin's past as a strong wheat state. Before corn and soybeans flourished, Wisconsin settlers planted many acres of wheat.
When it was built, the Washburn A was the largest flour mill in the world, and the most technologically advanced in a city where more than 20 flour mills once towered along the banks of the Mississippi. This old mill was built by the Washburn Crosby Co., a predecessor to General Mills.
Within the ruins of this National Historic Landmark, this museum provides a multi-sensory, interactive journey. Upper Midwest agriculture, as it was in the late 1800s, comes to life through the eight-story Flour Tower and other hands-on exhibits.
Beginning in 1880 and for 50 years thereafter, Minneapolis was known as the "Flour Milling Capital of the World." At peak production, this mill ground enough flour to make 12 million loaves of bread in a day. This wheat-based industry flourished in "Mill City" from roughly 1880 to 1930. The city's population surged from 13,000 in 1870 to 165,000 by 1890.
Minneapolis grew up around the mills, which received grain via rail lines stretching across the Northern Plains grain belt into the Dakotas and Canada. Trains also carried the milled flour to the big Great Lakes' port at Duluth and to eastern U.S. destinations both for export and domestic distribution.
Every working day, approximately 175 railroad cars of wheat were processed at this mill. In one year, it ground the wheat harvested from 23,000 farms. The flour mills stimulated a boom in larger farms, and by 1880, 70 percent of Minnesota's cultivated land - almost 4.5 million acres - was planted in wheat.
After World War I the milling industry in Minneapolis began to decline. As the industry moved out of Minneapolis, the old mills fell into disuse. The Washburn A Mill closed in 1965. In 1991 the mill was nearly destroyed by fire. The city cleaned up the rubble and fortified the charred walls of the mill in the late 1990s. Shortly thereafter, the Minnesota Historical Society announced plans to develop Mill City Museum.
Kate Roberts, exhibit developer for the Minnesota Historical Society, located in St. Paul, was instrumental in this project. She helped decide what stories would be told and how the exhibits would look. From "farm country" in Moorhead, Minn., Roberts tells Agri-View she has a "real soft spot" for the Red River Valley and Upper Midwest agriculture in general.
From sawmills to flour mills
The birth of the flour-milling industry was the "second act" of the industrial drama that took place at St. Anthony Falls, the only naturally occurring waterfall on the Mississippi River. Sawmills came first, in the 1850s, but were supplanted within decades by flour mills. Both industries were built around the falls of St. Anthony Falls, an extraordinary power-generating resource. At the industry's peak, some 20 flour mills stood along a covered canal, flowing with water drawn from the river above the falls. When the Washburn A Mill re-opened in 1880 - two years after it was destroyed in a catastrophic fire that claimed 18 lives - it was, as noted, the biggest.
The Washburn A Mill suffered great loss in its history. It exploded twice - first in 1878 when it destroyed one-third of the city's milling capacity in one night. It was rebuilt in 1880 but exploded again in 1928. In 1991, when the building was home to a few tenants and many homeless people, it went up in flames yet again.
Innovations flourish
Creative approaches in marketing generated more demand for flour and product innovations, such as cake mixes. General Mills, for example, introduced Betty Crocker in 1921, an icon featured at Mill City Museum, along with others like the Pillsbury Doughboy.
In the industry's early days in Minneapolis, almost all sales were of "family flour," used in home baking and sold in 196-pound family barrels. It wasn't until later that the barrels were replaced by 100, 50 and 25-pound cotton or jute sacks. Home baking declined, however, as people moved from farm to city. By the time the U.S. entered World War I in 1917, bakeries were making 30 percent of the nation's bread.
The end of a dynasty
After World War I, the milling industry in Minneapolis began to decline, chiefly due to changes in tariff and railroad rates that favored mills located in cities better situated to process Canadian wheat, especially Buffalo, N.Y. In 1930 Buffalo supplanted Minneapolis as the nation's flour-milling capital, producing 11 million barrels to Minneapolis' 10.8 million annually. As the industry moved out of Minneapolis, many mills were abandoned and subsequently razed. Others have since been turned into up-scale condominiums overlooking the river.
Mill City Museum has left intact many features of the original mill, including flour bins, milling machinery, the engine house, rail corridor and a wheat house. Limestone, brick, concrete and steel within the museum emphasizes its industrial origins. Among the new architectural features is an eight-story glass façade overlooking the Mississippi River. True-to-scale graphics of the milling machines are featured on the glass façade to give visitors an idea of how massive the milling process was. The facade forms a reflective backdrop for the weathered masonry walls that frame a 100-by-100 foot, open-air courtyard formed by the 1991 fire. Ruins of the historic mill are showcased in the courtyard through significant excavation efforts.
There are hands-on exhibits such as a Baking Lab, Water Lab and the Flour Tower. Visitors have opportunities to interact with costumed guides representing Minnesota's past, drive "logs" down a working model of the Mississippi River and cook in the Baking Lab.
In the Water Lab, there are models of the river, dam and covered canal that carried water to all the mills in the district. Visitors can divert water into the canal and feel the pressure of dropping water used to turn turbines at the mill.
In the Baking Lab, they can conduct food experiments and watching professional baking demonstrations.
They can learn how WCCO radio (whose call letters stood for the Washburn Crosby Co.) put Betty Crocker on the air waves. Vintage ads and packaging are displayed.
Roberts says one of the highlights is a table set with a meal ready-and-waiting for a circa 1900 threshing crew. It's a unique way to show the "scale of operations" of the region's wheat farms. It's interwoven with diary entries from farm women who were called upon to feed all those men.
However, the centerpiece of Mill City Museum, says Roberts, is an eight-story elevator ride that enables visitors to experience the powerful, noisy, industrial process that turned wheat into flour.
"A freight elevator" that comfortably holds 30 people moves floor-to-floor. The doors open onto different "stage sets" as visitors listen to oral history and projections of images that blend the real with an almost surreal past. The experience takes about 10 minutes.
The tower features historic film, photographs, dramatic lighting, surround sound and other special effects to bring the stories of people who worked these flour mills to life.
It was a noisy, dusty and often dangerous place to work, what with explosions from flour dust.
The ninth floor is a rooftop observation deck that offers sweeping views of the Mississippi River, St. Anthony Falls, the Stone Arch Bridge (an old railroad bridge that's now sports walkers, bikers and a trolley) and Mill Ruins Park. Roberts says it's an archeological dig. Old foundations and underground water systems from which the mills sourced water are being excavated for the public to see. A two-mile loop trail offers a self-guided walking tour along the Minneapolis riverfront within the St. Anthony Falls National Register Historic District. Trail markers tell the stories of the people related to the falls as well as the geological, engineering and industrial history of the district.
"This is a one-of-a-kind museum - a state-of-the-art museum in an historic building," Roberts describes.
Mill City Museum is open year round, Tuesday through Saturday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Sundays, noon to 5 p.m. as well as on Memorial and Labor Days. The first Thursday of every month there are extended hours, until 9 p.m.
Mill City Museum is located in downtown Minneapolis on the west bank of the Mississippi River, just north of the Metrodome, near the corner of Portland Avenue and Second Street. Look for the Gold Medal Flour sign. The museum is right next door. Visit http://www.millcitymuseum.org for more information or call 612-341-7555.