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Stone Arch Bridge History

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The name Minneapolis is a combination of mni, a Dakota Sioux word for water, and polis, the Ancient Greek word for city. The name is fitting, considering water is the city's defining physical characteristic, which the history and economic growth of Minneapolis heavily relied on. During the last ice age, glaciers created the many bodies of water in Minneapolis, including the Mississippi riverbed and created the river's only waterfall, Saint Anthony Falls, a great source of power for its early industry, important to the settlers of Minneapolis. Now these bodies of water have shaped the very lifestyle the citizens who live here. The Minneapolis park system has repeatedly been named the best-designed, best-financed, and best-maintained in America within it’s thriving urban setting. Of it’s 180 park bodies, 22 are along lakes, others along creeks and rivers. Runner's World ranks the Twin Cities as America's sixth best …show more content…
Hill planned to construct a bridge that would carry the Great Northern Railway over the Mississippi. He moved forward with construction of the bridge as planned in January 1882. Approximately 600 men worked night and day to build the bridge. Construction of the 2,100 ft long bridge and the two sets of tracks it carried over the Mississippi concluded in November 1883. The Stone Arch Bridge was immediately hailed as a remarkable feat of engineering, the newspapers of the time describing it as “firmer than the earth which supports it” and “more solid than the ground itself”. (Jones, 2010, 48-49) The railways constructed on the stone arch bridge served to carry passengers, and to connect Midwestern farmers and their crops of wheat to the booming flour production mills, until 1978 when the last passenger train crossed the bridge. In 1994 the Stone Arch Bridge was converted into a pedestrian and bike trail. Visitors can walk across the bridge to take in the views of St. Anthony Falls, the only waterfall on the entire Mississippi

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