Why go
Reading these sites together explains why the city did not begin as a single downtown. The fort stood near the Minnesota–Mississippi confluence, while the falls farther upriver supplied water power. Early mills served the fort before private sawmills and settlements grew around the falls.
The full story
The United States established Fort Snelling in 1819 near the meeting of the Minnesota and Mississippi rivers. Soldiers built roads, grew food and needed lumber and flour; a sawmill and grist mill at Saint Anthony Falls supplied the fort from 1822. The fort also asserted federal jurisdiction in Dakota homelands. Pressure from traders, disease and the loss of resources accompanied treaties through which the Mdewakanton Dakota lost land, opening the west bank to settler claims. On the east bank, Franklin Steele developed a sawmill at the falls. On the west, John H. Stevens obtained a claim in exchange for operating a ferry. These were parts of a broader colonial settlement process, not isolated pioneer stories. The fort and falls are geographically separate, but together they explain why federal power, a river crossing and water-driven industry all mattered to the city’s beginnings.