What Exactly Are The “Twin Cities”
Today people know Minneapolis and St. Paul as the twin cities, but those were not the original twin cities. Had you been a pioneer in the 1840s, you would have known the twin cities to mean Minneapolis and St. Anthony’s Falls. The two cities were separated by the Mississippi River with St. Anthony’s Falls lying on the east and Minneapolis on the west.
St. Anthony’s Falls was first marketed in 1680, by Father Louis Hennepin, who named them after his patron saint, Anthony of Padua. By the early 1800s, the area was home to many artists and writers. The early settlers to the area were drawn by reports comparing the falls to Niagara Falls. Some early explorers even claimed they could hear the falls roaring thirty miles away. These early settlers had to travel a long way to travel to move between the two cities. Finally, a bridge was built and in 1872, St. Anthony’s Falls became part of Minneapolis.
It was at this point that St. Paul became the twin city. Until 1850, St. Paul had been little more than a dot on the map with only 900 residents. However, during the next ten years the population exploded. In 1860, the population of St. Paul was 10,000.