Nature’s Crossroads: The Twin Cities and Greater Minnesota

Description

Minnesota’s Twin Cities have long been powerful engines of change. From their origins in the early nineteenth century, the Twin Cities helped drive the dispossession of the region’s Native American peoples, turned their riverfronts into bustling industrial and commercial centers, spread streets and homes outward to the horizon, and reached well beyond their urban confines, setting in motion the environmental transformation of distant hinterlands. As these processes unfolded, residents inscribed their culture into the landscape, complete with all its tensions, disagreements, contradictions, prejudices, and social inequalities. These stories lie at the heart of Nature’s Crossroads. The book features an interdisciplinary team of distinguished scholars who aim to open new conversations about the environmental history of the Twin Cities and Greater Minnesota. Contents Acknowledgments Introduction: Unearthing Nature’s Crossroads | George Vrtis and Christopher W. Wells Part I. The Dynamics of Environmental Change: Cities, Commodities, Hinterlands 1. A Tale of Two Waterfronts: Commerce, Industry, and the Environmental Transformation of Minnesota’s Twin Cities | Christopher W. Wells and George Vrtis 2. Down to the Farm: Wheat Ecology and International Markets in Minnesota, 1850–1900 | Thomas Finger 3. Competing Hinterlands: Saint Paul, Madison, and the Landscape of Burnett County, Wisconsin | David A. Lanegran 4. Upstream, Downstream: The Flooding of Anishinaabe Lands by Upper Mississippi Dams | Michael D. McNally 5. Making Stumps and Fields: Working Environments in the Woods and on the Cutover, 1890s–1930s | Kevin C. Brown 6. “Follow the Arrows to the Arrowhead”: The Environment of Tourism in the Interwar Years | Aaron Shapiro Part II: The Twin Cities and the Built Environment 7. Fountains of Life and Death: A History of the Minneapolis and Saint Paul Water Supply Systems | John O. Anfinson 8. Urban Environmental History and Loring Park: How Cultural Views of Nature Influenced Recreational Design | Karen Wellner 9. “Awheel from Chicago to the Twin Cities”: Legacies of Turn-ofthe-Century Bicycle Paths in Minneapolis and Saint Paul | James Longhurst 10. The Suburb of Minneapolis: Defining the City’s “Urban” Form | Robert S. Thompson 11. The Campus as Watershed: Urban Sustainability and the Pedagogy of Place | Joseph Underhill Part III: Environmental Politics, Thought, and Justice 12. Monumental Encounters: The Politics of History, Conservation, and the Reconstruction of Grand Portage, 1922–1958 | Chantal Norrgard 13. Pittsburgh’s Colony in Saint Paul’s Hinterland: Tensions over Environmentalism in Northeastern Minnesota’s Iron Range | Jeffrey T. Manuel 14. A House Divided: The Minnesota Experimental City and Competing Narratives of Conservation | Todd A. Wildermuth 15. Dissecting a Nation-Leading Legacy: The Minnesota Acid Rain Story | Gregory C. Pratt 16. The Urban Roots of Militant Indian Protest: AIM’s Origins in the Twin Cities, 1968–1973 | William C. Barnett 17. Radioactive Waste, Public Debate, and Environmental Justice at Prairie Island | James W. Feldman Afterword: Minnesota’s Many Intersecting Crossroads | Kathleen A. Brosnan Notes List of Contributors Index