Minneapolis was a bridge between the living and the dead

Anyone who loves Minneapolis, a city I argue is among the top five in the world, will love this 1995 City Pages piece by current Minnesota Monthly "dining" critic Dara Moskowitz Grumdahl.

It's the type of piece that no one locally will do anymore. It's got the drama of an entire frontier city's cancerous growth and eventual sanitation: drunks, capitalism, assassination and populist demagogues. Written at a time when Minneapolis was dubbed "Murderapolis," Dara predicts a return of the bad old days.

Look at this (photo: Minnesota Historical Society, Bohemian Flats near the West Bank, 1898):

"These settlers had bought up a godforsaken place, which they proceeded to christen All Saints. "All Saints" then meant literally a place where the spirits of the dead mingled with the living: a terrifying, un-Christian place. Perhaps, since it was believed that witches and ghosts couldn't cross a moving stream, they thought that the land west of the Mississippi was especially haunted, rife with the spirits of the untamed territory sprawling out to the west."

Check out this hidden gem (Photo: Minnesota Historical Society, 1886):

"Dead Dogs" were the subject of a worried Minneapolis Tribune on July 12, 1867: "There are dead dogs laying around where they have died... and this warm weather will soon make them more of a nuisance than they were when alive." Dogs weren't the only problem: "If cows are kept by people in the city," complained the Tribune a month later, "they should be compelled to put them in a yard overnight. It is unsafe for a person to drive through our streets on a dark night for fear of running on to cows lying in the street... They are really a great nuisance, and make streets look like barn yards."


Read the whole thing, but here's one last appetizer(photo: Minnesota Historical Society, Bohemian Flats near the West Bank, 1900):

"The most violent of these shantytowns, Hell's Half Acre, occupied the block between Eighth and Ninth Streets and Second and Third Avenues South. Mead's History of the Police and Fire Departments described them as a settlement "of utter darkness, wailing, and woe. Bloody frays were a nightly occurrence.... The alleys were strewn with empty beer kegs and whisky bottles, and the latter were often used as weapons of warfare." Police were strongly discouraged from entering this area: Life was cheap there, and the community displayed such solidarity that police were greeted with the damping of all lanterns and candles, and were frequently pelted with bottles and rocks until they fled."