1,000 Places to See in the U.S.A. & Canada Before You Die (65 page)

An Urban Meander Through Verdant Parks and Parkways

Minneapolis, Minnesota

Leave it to the outdoorsy city of Minneapolis to carve out a scenic urban drive like the Grand Rounds National Scenic Byway. A byway of this caliber and ambition typically runs through rural regions, but here 55 miles
of tree-lined parkways wander in a connect-the-dots loop around Minneapolis, linking many of the city’s lakes, rivers, parks, and natural areas. Covering the whole route takes about three leisurely hours by car, and many visitors enjoy doing part of it by bike or on foot. True to the metro area’s recreational ethic, a separate path parallels the road in many stretches for cyclists, runners, strollers, and—this being the heart of hockey country—in-line skaters.

With more than 5.5 million visitors annually, the Chain where several interconnected lakes draw of Lakes is the most visited natural resource in Minnesota.

The Grand Rounds is divided into seven distinct districts and includes more than 50 interpretive sites, from ancient Native American to bird sanctuaries. Together, the sites and routes help illustrate the natural heritage and human history of Minneapolis.

The Chain of Lakes district showcases one of Minneapolis’s most endearing areas,
cyclists, skaters, and sailors in the shadow of the Minneapolis skyline. Parkways in the Mississippi River district skirt the river on both banks, offering dramatic vistas of the river gorge and the high bluffs that frame it.

Routes in the Downtown Riverfront district wend alongside city cafés, old flour mills, and working barges squeezing through locks as they haul grain and other commodities downriver. The Grand Rounds reveals an eclectic cross section of Minneapolis—urban and parklike, at work and at play—a diversity that is the essence of this unique city’s appeal.

G
RAND
R
OUNDS
N
ATIONAL
S
CENIC
B
YWAY
: Tel 612–230-6400;
www.minneapolisparks.org
.
B
EST TIMES
: May for birding and spring flowers; Sept for fall color along the Mississippi River.

Where Local Institutions Still Make Headlines and Waves

Minneapolis, Minnesota

In a city already known for a lively arts scene, Minneapolis never stops showing the love. Year after year, the city continues its generous per capita support of civic culture, with several of its venerable theaters and art
museums having undergone large expansions over the last few years.

Mention Minneapolis theater and the first name that springs to mind is the renowned Guthrie Theater. Acclaimed British theatrical director Sir Tyrone Guthrie founded the classical repertory company in 1963 in response to what he and others viewed as the commercialization of Broadway. The Tony Award–winning theater is a hallmark of the regional theater movement and enjoys a nationwide reputation for artistic and technical excellence.

In 2006, the Guthrie made a major and controversial move from its original home next to the Walker Art Center to a $125 million, 285,000-square-foot complex across town on the banks of the Mississippi River. Designed by architect Jean Nouvel, responsible for the highly unconventional Musée du quai Branly on the Left Bank in Paris, the new Guthrie features the same vibrant imagination, with a striking metal and glass exterior that evokes the silos and mills found along the Mississippi’s working waterfront.

Perfect circles of grass dot the concrete walk leading to the entrance of the new Walker Art Center.

Another Minneapolis art treasure is the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden, an 11-acre urban oasis, sidled up against the Walker Art Center and linked by a footbridge to lovely Loring Park. Dozens of modern-art sculptures fill the garden, including Coosje van Bruggen’s whimsical
Spoonbridge and Cherry,
a 50-foot spoon topped with a water-fountain cherry that
has become a Minneapolis icon. Other works include Frank Gehry’s stunning
Standing Glass Fish,
along with pieces by notable sculptors from Henry Moore to Claes Oldenberg to Jenny Holzer. Next door, the Walker Art Center gleams with a 130,000-square-foot, $74 million addition by the Swiss firm Herzog & de Meuron. This new showstopper features a mesh skin of perforated aluminum panels rising from the street in a chunky, angular shape. The addition nearby doubles the exhibit space and allows for more of the permanent collections to be shown. The Walker is often considered the best contemporary art museum between the coasts; its soaring, angled ceilings seem to draw you from one area to the next.

G
UTHRIE
T
HEATER
: Tel 612–377-2224;
www.guthrietheater.org
.
W
ALKER
A
RT
C
ENTER AND
M
INNEAPOLIS
S
CULPTURE
G
ARDEN
: Tel 612–375-7600;
www.walkerart.org
.

Birthplace of Minnesota

Pine, Chisago, and Washington Counties, Minnesota

It’s just 20 miles but a century away from modern Minneapolis to the bucolic river towns of the St. Croix river valley. Here steamboats and the mansions of lumber barons still look perfectly at home, and time seems to roll along at the
easygoing pace of the river. Logs had already replaced furs as the St. Croix’s lucrative cargo when the town of Stillwater was established in 1843. By 1850, the wealthy port town was the second largest city (after St. Paul) in Minnesota Territory, with 609 residents and grand Greek Revival and Italianate homes built by Scandinavian craftsmen. Today, Stillwater’s population of 15,350 still embraces its river town heritage, and so do many Twin Cities visitors, who have made it a popular weekend getaway. An 1867 Italianate county courthouse—the state’s oldest—presides over a turn-ofthe-century Main Street lined with restaurants, galleries, and antiques shops. An abundance of 19th-century buildings, such as the Lowell Inn, a redbrick colonial in the style of Washington’s Mount Vernon, now serve as museums and historic lodgings. A 1940s dinner train, the
Minnesota Zephyr,
adds to the town’s retro feel, with three-hour trips along the bluff-rimmed valley. Twelve miles south is the farming town of Afton, and the charming Afton House Inn, which has served as a hotel since 1867.

North of Stillwater, Highway 95 slaloms with the bends of the St. Croix as it wends through striking sandstone bluffs. The state’s first Swedish immigrants settled in Scandia (the ancient name for Scandinavia), where the Gammelgarden Museum now preserves several early settlement buildings and each June residents celebrate Midsommar Dag (Midsummer’s Day) with an arts and crafts festival and traditional foods.

Taylors Falls may be the region’s prettiest town, with white clapboard homes perched on the bluffs over the deepening river valley and paddle wheelers churning past 100-foot sandstone cliffs. Highway 95 continues upriver to the St. Croix’s wilder upper reaches; at the aptly named Wild River State Park, hiking trails weave along forested banks and swift-running waters.

S
TILLWATER
: 20 miles east of Minneapolis/St. Paul.
Stillwater visitor info:
Tel 651–439-4001;
www.ilovestillwater.com
.
Taylors Falls visitor info:
Tel 800–447-4985 or 651–465-6315;
www.taylorsfallschamber.org
.
L
OWELL
I
NN
: Stillwater. Tel 651–439-1100;
www.lowellinn.com
.
Cost:
from $65 (off-peak), from $79 (peak).
M
INNESOTA
Z
EPHYR
: Stillwater. Tel 800–992-6100 or 651–430-3000;
www.minnesotazephyr.com
.
Cost:
from $71, includes 5-course dinner.
A
FTON
H
OUSE
: Afton. Tel 877–436-8883 or 651–436-8883;
www.aftonhouseinn.com
.
Cost:
from $79.
G
AMMELGARDEN
M
USEUM
: Scandia. Tel 651–433-5053.
When:
late Apr–mid-Dec.
T
AYLORS
F
ALLS
S
CENIC
B
OAT
T
OURS
: Tel 800–447-4858 or 651–465-6315;
www.wildmountain.com/boat
.
When:
early May–mid-Oct.
B
EST TIMES
: May for the Rivertown Spring Art Fair in Stillwater; late June for Midsommar Dag in Scandia; late Sept for foliage.

Wooded Bluffs and Winsome River Towns

Red Wing to Winona, Minnesota

Just southeast of the Twin Cities, the Mississippi takes on its signature grandeur, rolling strong and smooth between high bluffs of sandstone, from Red Wing to Winona. Some of Minnesota’s oldest communities lie along
its banks. These timeless river towns, which came into their own during the steamboating era, are linked by U.S. Highway 61, the northernmost segment of the 2,069-mile Great River Road (see p. 448) that shadows the Mississippi all the way to New Orleans.

Red Wing was surely one of the communities Mark Twain had in mind when he talked of stalwart Minnesota river towns built “with the air of intending to stay.” Red Wing has indeed stayed, with a current population of some 16,000 residents. Handsome redbrick buildings line up for blocks, as clean and sturdy as they were in the 19th century, when the town prospered from shipping grain and milling flour. Tourism ranks as a key industry nowadays, and the proud buffed-up downtown and lovely location on a placid bend in the river delights visitors. The Red Wing Shoe Company, one of the town’s oldest and largest employers, was the force behind much of the restoration, including the 1875 St. James Hotel (the city’s finest lodging, with rooms named after riverboats). Pick up a historic walking tour brochure at the visitor center—housed in a neat 1904 railroad depot—for other historic gems, including the grandiose Sheldon Theatre. Stoneware pottery was another key industry in the 1800s, now revived by artisans at Red Wing Pottery and Red Wing Stoneware on the west end of town.

Downstream from Red Wing, the Mississippi yawns wide across the valley, its natural flow choked by silt deposited at the mouth of Wisconsin’s Chippewa River. The resulting 22-mile-long bulge is known as Lake Pepin, where many sources believe waterskiing was invented. It most certainly was the childhood playground of author Laura Ingalls Wilder, who drew from much of her pioneer life for her Little House books. Fans can visit
a reconstructed cabin at her birth site across the river, near Alma, Wisconsin, or continue farther to DeSmet, South Dakota, the much-visited setting of five of her books (see p. 655).