Minneapolis

Prior to European settlement, the Dakota Sioux were the sole occupants of the site of modern-day Minneapolis. In Dakota language, the city's name is Bde Óta Othúŋwe ('Many Lakes Town').[lower-alpha 1] The French explored the region in 1680. Gradually, more European-American settlers arrived, competing with the Dakota for game and other natural resources. Following the Revolutionary War, the 1783 Treaty of Paris gave British-claimed territory east of the Mississippi River to the United States.[8] In 1803, the U.S. acquired land to the west of the Mississippi from France in the Louisiana Purchase. In 1819, US Army built Fort Snelling at the southern edge of present-day Minneapolis[9] to direct Native American trade away from British-Canadian traders, and to deter warring between the Dakota and Ojibwe in northern Minnesota.[10] The fort attracted traders, settlers and merchants, spurring growth in the surrounding region. At the fort, agents of the St. Peters Indian Agency enforced the US policy of assimilating Native Americans into European-American society, encouraging them to give up subsistence hunting and to cultivate the land.[11] Missionaries encouraged Native Americans to convert from their own religion to Christianity.[11]

Indian paths (19th century)

The U.S. government pressed the Dakota to sell their land, which they ceded in a series of treaties that were negotiated by corrupt officials.[12] In the decades following the signings of these treaties, their terms were rarely honored.[13] During the American Civil War, officials plundered annuities promised to Native Americans, leading to famine among the Dakota.[14] In 1862, a faction of the Dakota who were facing starvation[15] declared war and killed settlers. The Dakota were interned and exiled from Minnesota.[16]

While the Dakota were being expelled, Franklin Steele laid claim to the east bank of Saint Anthony Falls,[10] and John H. Stevens built a home on the west bank.[17] Residents had divergent ideas on names for their community. In 1852, Charles Hoag proposed combining the Dakota word for 'water' (mni[lower-alpha 2]) with the Greek word for 'city' (polis), yielding Minneapolis. In 1851 after a meeting of the Minnesota Territorial Legislature, leaders of St. Anthony lost their bid to move the capital from Saint Paul.[22] In a close vote, St. Paul and Stillwater agreed to divide federal funding[22] between them: St. Paul would be the capital. Stillwater would build the prison. The St. Anthony contingent eventually won the state university.[22] In 1856, the territorial legislature authorized Minneapolis as a town on the Mississippi's west bank.[23] Minneapolis incorporated as a city in 1867 and in 1872, it merged with the city of St. Anthony on the river's east bank.[24]

Loading flour, Pillsbury, 1939

Minneapolis developed around Saint Anthony Falls, the highest waterfall on the Mississippi River, which was used as a source of energy. A lumber industry was built around forests in northern Minnesota, and 17 sawmills operated from energy provided by the waterfall. By 1871, the river's west bank had 23 businesses, including flour mills, woolen mills, iron works, a railroad machine shop, and mills for cotton, paper, sashes and wood-planing.[25] Due to the occupational hazards of milling, by the 1890s, six companies manufactured artificial limbs.[26] Grain grown in the Great Plains was shipped by rail to the city's 34 flour mills. A 1989 Minnesota Archaeological Society analysis of the Minneapolis riverfront describes the use of water power in Minneapolis between 1880 and 1930 as "the greatest direct-drive waterpower center the world has ever seen".[27] Minneapolis led the world in flour milling for 50 years.[27]

Cadwallader C. Washburn, a founder of modern milling and of what became General Mills, converted his business from gristmills to "gradual reduction" by steel-and-porcelain roller mills that were capable of quickly producing premium-quality, pure, white flour.[28][29] William Dixon Gray developed some ideas[30] and William de la Barre acquired others through industrial espionage in Hungary.[29] Charles Alfred Pillsbury and the C.A. Pillsbury Company across the river hired Washburn employees and immediately began using the new methods.[29]

An 1867 court case allowed digging the Eastman tunnel under the river at Nicollet Island.[31] In 1869, a leak soon sucked the 6 ft (1.8 m) tailrace into a 90 ft (27 m)-wide chasm.[31] Community-led repairs failed and in 1870, several buildings and mills fell into the river.[31] For years, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers struggled to close the gap with timber until their concrete dike held in 1876.[31]

The hard, red, spring wheat grown in Minnesota became valuable ($0.50 profit per barrel in 1871 increased to $4.50 in 1874),[28] and Minnesota "patent" flour was recognized as the best in the world.[29] Later consumers discovered value in the bran that " ... Minneapolis flour millers routinely dumped" into the Mississippi.[32] A single mill at Washburn-Crosby could make enough flour for 12 million loaves of bread each day[33] and by 1900, 14 percent of America's grain was milled in Minneapolis.[28][29] By 1895, through the efforts of silent partner William Hood Dunwoody, Washburn-Crosby exported four million barrels of flour a year to the United Kingdom.[34] When exports reached their peak in 1900, about one third of all flour milled in Minneapolis was shipped overseas.[34]

Mississippi riverfront and Saint Anthony Falls in 1915. At left, Pillsbury, power plants and the Stone Arch Bridge. Today the Minnesota Historical Society's Mill City Museum is in the Washburn "A" Mill, across the river just to the left of the falls. At center-left are Northwestern Consolidated mills. The tall building is Minneapolis City Hall. In the right foreground are Nicollet Island and the Hennepin Avenue Bridge.

In 1886, when Martha Ripley founded Maternity Hospital for both married and unmarried mothers, Minneapolis made changes to rectify discrimination against unmarried women.[35] Known initially as a kindly physician, mayor Doc Ames made his brother police chief, ran the city into corruption, and tried to leave town in 1902.[36] Lincoln Steffens published Ames's story in "The Shame of Minneapolis" in 1903.[37] The gangster Kid Cann engaged in bribery and intimidation between the 1920s and the 1940s.[38]

During the early 20th century, bigotry presented in several ways. In 1910, a Minneapolis developer wrote restrictive covenants based on race and ethnicity into his deeds. Other developers copied the practice, preventing Asian and African Americans from owning or leasing certain properties. Though such language was prohibited by state law in 1953 and by the federal Fair Housing Act of 1968, restrictive covenants against minorities remained in many Minneapolis deeds as recently as 2021, when the city gave residents a means to remove them.[39][40] The Ku Klux Klan entered family life but was only effectively a force in the city from 1921 until 1923.[41] After Minnesota passed a eugenics law in 1925, the proprietors of Eitel Hospital sterilized about 1,000 people at Faribault State Hospital.[42] From the end of World War I in 1918 until 1950, antisemitism was commonplace in Minneapolis—Carey McWilliams called the city the anti-Semitic capital of the United States.[43] A hate group called the Silver Legion of America held meetings in the city from 1936 to 1938.[44] In 1948, Mount Sinai Hospital opened as the city's first hospital to employ members of minority races and religions.[45][44]

Battle between striking teamsters and police, Minneapolis general strike of 1934

Minneapolis has a long history of structural racism and has some of the United States' largest racial disparities in housing, income, health care, and education.[46] Some historians have said at various times, some White Minneapolitans have used discrimination based on race against the city's non-White residents. As White settlers displaced the indigenous population during the 19th century, they claimed the city's land.[47] In 1910, when less than one percent of Minneapolis residents were non-White, the city was fairly well integrated.[46] Discrimination increased when flour milling moved to the east coast and the economy declined.[48] By the 1950s, still less than two percent of the city's population was non-White.[49] Commentators have written about historic racism and socioeconomic disparities in Minneapolis.[50] Kirsten Delegard of Mapping Prejudice explained that disparities today evolved from White people asserting control of the city's land.[51] William D. Green of Augsburg University said in Minneapolis, people of different races live in parallel universes.[51]

During the financial downturn of the Great Depression, the violent Teamsters Strike of 1934 led to laws acknowledging workers' rights.[52] Mayor Hubert Humphrey helped the city establish fair employment practices and by 1946, a human-relations council that interceded on behalf of minorities was established.[53] In 1966 and 1967, years of significant turmoil across the US, suppressed anger among the Black population was released in two disturbances on Plymouth Avenue.[54] A coalition reached a peaceful outcome but failed to solve Black poverty and unemployment; Charles Stenvig, a law-and-order candidate, became mayor.[55] Minneapolis contended with White supremacy, participated in desegregation and engaged with the civil rights movement; in 1968, the American Indian Movement was founded in Minneapolis.[56]

Between 1958 and 1963, as part of urban renewal in America,[57] Minneapolis demolished roughly 40 percent of downtown, including the Gateway District and its significant architecture, such as the Metropolitan Building. Efforts to save the building failed but encouraged interest in historic preservation.[58]

On May 25, 2020, a citizen recorded the murder of George Floyd, an African-American man who suffocated when Derek Chauvin, a White Minneapolis police officer, knelt on Floyd's neck and back for more than nine minutes. The incident sparked national unrest, riots and mass protests.[59] Local protests and riots resulted in extraordinary levels of property damage in Minneapolis;[60] the destruction including a police station that demonstrators overran and set on fire.[61] The Twin Cities experienced prolonged unrest over racial injustice from 2020 to 2022.[62]

Minneapolis is divided into eleven communities, each containing several neighborhoods, of which there are 83. In some cases, two or more neighborhoods act together under one organization. Some areas are known by nicknames of business associations.[74]

In 2018, Minneapolis City Council voted to approve the Minneapolis 2040 Comprehensive Plan, which resulted in a city-wide end to single-family zoning. Minneapolis was the first major city in the United States to make this change.[75] At the time, 70 percent of residential land was zoned for detached, single-family homes, however many of those areas had "nonconforming" buildings with more housing units. City leaders sought to increase the supply of housing so more neighborhoods would be affordable and to decrease the effects single-family zoning had caused on racial disparities and segregation.[76] The Brookings Institution called it "a relatively rare example of success for the YIMBY agenda".[77] A Hennepin County District Court judge blocked the city from enforcing the plan because it lacked an overall environmental review. Arguing it will evaluate projects on an individual basis, as of July 2022, the city is allowed to use the plan while an appeal is pending.[78]

Minneapolis experiences a hot-summer humid continental climate (Dfa in the Köppen climate classification),[79] that is typical of southern parts of the Upper Midwest, and is situated in USDA plant hardiness zone 4b; small enclaves of Minneapolis are classified as zone 5a.[80][81][82] Minneapolis has cold, snowy winters and hot, humid summers, as is typical in a continental climate. The difference between average temperatures in the coldest winter month and the warmest summer month is 58.1 °F (32.3 °C).

According to the NOAA, the annual average for sunshine duration is 58%.[83] Minneapolis experiences a full range of precipitation and related weather events, including snow, sleet, ice, rain, thunderstorms, and fog. The highest recorded temperature is 108 °F (42 °C) in July 1936 while the lowest is −41 °F (−41 °C) in January 1888. The snowiest winter on record was 1983–84, when 98.6 inches (250 cm) of snow fell:[84] the least-snowiest winter was 1890–91, when 11.1 inches (28 cm) fell.[85]

The indigenous Dakota people, the original inhabitants of the Minneapolis area, believed in the Great Spirit and were surprised not all European settlers were religious.[111] More than 50 denominations and religions are present in Minneapolis; a majority of the city's population are Christian. Settlers who arrived from New England were for the most part Protestants, Quakers, and Universalists.[111] The oldest continuously used church, Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic Church, was built in 1856 by Universalists and soon afterward was acquired by a French Catholic congregation.[112] The first Jewish congregation was formed in 1878 as Shaarai Tov, and built Temple Israel in 1928.[97] St. Mary's Orthodox Cathedral was founded in 1887; it opened a missionary school and created the first Russian Orthodox seminary in the US.[113] Edwin Hawley Hewitt designed St. Mark's Episcopal Cathedral and Hennepin Avenue United Methodist Church, both of which are located south of downtown.[114] The Basilica of Saint Mary, the first basilica in the US and co-cathedral of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Saint Paul and Minneapolis, was named by Pope Pius XI in 1926.[111]

Christ Church Lutheran is a National Historic Landmark.[115]

By 1959, Temple of Islam was located in north Minneapolis, and the Islamic Center of Minnesota was established in 1965.[116] The city's first mosque was built in 1967.[117] Somalis who live in Minneapolis are primarily Sunni Muslim.[118] In 1971, a reported 150 persons attended classes at a Hindu temple near the university.[116] In 1972, a relief agency resettled the first Shi'a Muslim family from Uganda in the Twin Cities.[119] The city has about 20 Buddhist centers and meditation centers.[120] Minneapolis has a body of Ordo Templi Orientis.[121]

The Billy Graham Evangelistic Association was headquartered in Minneapolis from the late 1940s until the early 2000s.[122] Jim Bakker and Tammy Faye met while attending Pentecostal North Central University, and began a television ministry that by the 1980s reached 13.5 million households.[123] As of 2012, Mount Olivet Lutheran Church in southwest Minneapolis was the nation's second-largest Lutheran congregation, with about 6,000 attendees.[124] Christ Church Lutheran in the Longfellow neighborhood, the final work in the career of Eliel Saarinen, has an education building designed by his son Eero Saarinen.[115]

Minneapolis Institute of Art has a collection of 90,000 objects spanning 20,000 years.[142]

Walker Art Center is located at the summit of Lowry Hill near downtown. The center's size doubled in 2005 with an addition by Herzog & de Meuron, and expanded with a 15-acre (6.1 ha) park that was designed by Michel Desvigne and is located across the street from the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden.[143]

Minneapolis Institute of Art, which is known as Mia since its 100th anniversary and is located in south-central Minneapolis, was designed by McKim, Mead & White in 1915; Mia is the largest art museum in the city and has 100,000 pieces in its permanent collection. New wings, which were designed by Kenzo Tange and Michael Graves, opened in 1974 and 2006, respectively; the new wings house contemporary and modern works, and provide additional gallery space.[144]

Frank Gehry designed Weisman Art Museum, which opened in 1993, for the University of Minnesota.[145] A 2011 addition by Gehry doubled the size of the galleries.[146] The Museum of Russian Art opened in a restored church in 2005, and hosts a collection of 20th-century Russian art and special events.[147] Northeast Minneapolis Arts District hosts 400 independent artists, a center at the Northrup-King Building, and recurring annual events.[148]

Minneapolis has hosted theatrical performances since the end of the American Civil War.[149] Early theaters included Pence Opera House,[149] the Academy of Music, Grand Opera House, Lyceum, and later Metropolitan Opera House, which opened in 1894.[150] As of 2020, Minneapolis has numerous theater companies.[151]

Guthrie Theater, the area's largest theater company, occupies a three-stage complex that was designed by French architect Jean Nouvel and overlooks the Mississippi River.[144] The company was founded in 1963 by Sir Tyrone Guthrie as a prototype alternative to Broadway, and it produces a wide variety of shows throughout the year.[152][153] Minneapolis purchased and renovated the Orpheum, State, and Pantages Theatres, vaudeville and film houses on Hennepin Avenue that are now used for concerts and plays.[154] Another renovated theater, the Shubert, joined with the Hennepin Center for the Arts to become the Cowles Center for Dance and the Performing Arts, which houses more than 12 performing arts groups.[155][156]

Recording artist Prince studied at Minnesota Dance Theatre through Minneapolis Public Schools.[157][158]

Minnesota Orchestra plays classical and popular music at Orchestra Hall under Thomas Søndergård, the music director effective with the 2023–2024 season;[159] The New Yorker critic Alex Ross said of one 2010 special performance at Carnegie Hall, "...  the Minnesota Orchestra sounded, to my ears, like the greatest orchestra in the world".[160] The orchestra recorded Casa Guidi, winning a Grammy Award in 2004 for composer Dominick Argento.[161]

Singer and multi-instrumentalist Prince was born in Minneapolis, and lived in the area most of his life.[162] After Jimmy Jam and the 11-piece Mind & Matter broke through discrimination and racial barriers, Prince reached a global, multiracial audience with his combination of rock and funk.[163] Prince, an authentic musical prodigy who was enriched by a music program at The Way Community Center, learned to operate a Polymoog synthesizer at Sound 80 for his first album that became an element of the Minneapolis sound.[164] With fellow local musicians, many of whom recorded at Twin/Tone Records,[165] Prince helped change First Avenue and the 7th Street Entry into prominent venues for artists and audiences.[166]

The city hosts a number of other concert venues, including Icehouse, the Cedar, the Dakota and the Cabooze. Live Nation books The Armory, the Fillmore and the Varsity Theater.[167]

In 1970, Allan Fingerhut saw the potential for the nightclub that became First Avenue & 7th Street Entry which celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2020.[168]

Hüsker Dü and The Replacements were pivotal in the US alternative rock boom during the 1980s. Their respective frontmen Bob Mould and Paul Westerberg developed successful solo careers.[169] MN Spoken Word Association and independent hip hop label Rhymesayers Entertainment have garnered attention for their rap, hip hop, and spoken word performances and recordings.[170] Underground Minnesota hip hop acts such as Atmosphere and Manny Phesto prominently feature the city and Minnesota in their song lyrics.[171][172] Minneapolis Electronic dance music artists include Woody McBride,[173] Freddy Fresh,[174] and DVS1.[175]

Tom Waits released two songs about the city; "Christmas Card from a Hooker in Minneapolis" (Blue Valentine, 1978) and "9th & Hennepin" (Rain Dogs, 1985). Lucinda Williams recorded "Minneapolis" (World Without Tears, 2003). Minneapolis grunge band Babes in Toyland recorded Minneapolism (2001).[176] In 2008, the century-old MacPhail Center for Music opened a new facility that was designed by James Dayton.[177] Minneapolis's opera companies are Minnesota Opera, Mill City Summer Opera, the Gilbert & Sullivan Very Light Opera Company, and Really Spicy Opera.[178]

Exhibits at Mill City Museum feature the city's history of flour milling, and Minnehaha Depot was built in 1875.[179] The American Swedish Institute occupies a former mansion on Park Avenue.[180] The American Indian Cultural Corridor, about eight blocks on Franklin Avenue, houses All My Relatives Gallery.[181] On Penn Avenue North is Minnesota African American Heritage Museum and Gallery which was founded in 2018.[182] In a former mansion one block from Mia is Hennepin History Museum.[183] On East Lake Street is the world's only Somali history museum, the tiny Somali Museum of Minnesota.[184] The Bakken, which was formerly known as Museum of Electricity in Life, shifted focus in 2016 from electricity and magnetism to invention and innovation, and in 2020 opened a new entrance on Bde Maka Ska.[185]

Philanthropy and charitable giving have been part of the Minneapolis community since the 1800s.[186] As of 2022, Alight helps 2.5 million refugees and displaced persons each year in developing countries in Africa and Asia.[187] Catholic Charities of Minneapolis and Saint Paul is one of the largest non-profit organizations in the state, and a provider of several social services.[188] The Minneapolis Foundation invests and administers over 1,000 charitable funds.[189] According to AmeriCorps, in 2017, Minneapolis–Saint Paul, with 46.3% of the population volunteering, had the highest proportion of volunteers among US cities.[190]

The nonprofit literary presses Coffee House Press, Milkweed Editions, and Graywolf Press are based in Minneapolis.[191] Also internationally known, University of Minnesota Press publishes books, journals, and a widely used personality test, the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory.[192] Open Book, Minnesota Center for Book Arts, and The Loft Literary Center are located in Minneapolis.[193]

The 5-8 Club was founded in 1928 as a speakeasy, and claims to have originated the Jucy Lucy cheeseburger.

West Broadway Avenue was a cultural center during the early 20th century, but by the 1950s flight to the suburbs began and streetcar service ended citywide.[194] One of the largest urban food deserts in the US was in the north side of Minneapolis, where as of mid-2017, 70,000 people had access to only two grocery stores.[195] Wirth Co-op opened in 2017 but closed within a year. North Market opened in 2017.[196][197] The nonprofit Appetite for Change sought to improve the local diet, competing against an influx of fast-food stores,[198] and by 2017 it administered 10 gardens, sold produce in the mid-year months at West Broadway Farmers Market, supplied its restaurants, and gave away boxes of fresh produce.[199]

Several Minneapolis-based chefs have won regional James Beard Foundation Awards[200] Among her five wins and eleven nominations, writer Dara Moskowitz Grumdahl won the Jonathan Gold Local Voice Award in 2020.[201] Sean Sherman won the 2019 James Beard leadership award.[202] In 2021, Dana Thompson and Sherman opened Owamni (Dakota: Owámniyomni),[203] which in 2022 won "best new restaurant", the only time a Minnesota restaurant has won a James Beard award in a national category.[204]

The Jucy Lucy burger originated in Minneapolis at the 5-8 Club and Matt's Bar, where it has been served the since the 1950s.[205] The United States' first vegan butcher shop, The Herbivorous Butcher, opened in 2016.[206] East African cuisine arrived in Minneapolis with the wave of migrants from Somalia that started in the 1990s.[207] Gavin Kaysen and others on Team USA won a silver medal in the 2015 Bocuse d'Or.[208]

Each January and February, a series of events called The Great Northern is held in Minneapolis. The series includes the U.S. Pond Hockey Championships; the City of Lakes Loppet, a 22-mile (35 km) cross-country ski race; and the Saint Paul Winter Carnival.[209] The annual MayDay Parade returned in 2021 following the COVID-19 pandemic; other events include Art-A-Whirl; Pride Festival & Parade, Stone Arch Bridge Festival, and Twin Cities Juneteenth Celebration in June; Minneapolis Aquatennial in July; Minnesota Fringe Festival, Loring Park Art Festival, Metris Uptown Art Fair, Powderhorn Festival of Arts and the Lake Hiawatha Neighborhood Festival in August; Minneapolis Monarch Festival in September that celebrates the Monarch butterfly's 2,300-mile (3,700 km) migration; and the Twin Cities Marathon in October.[210]

The Minneapolis Public Library, which was founded by T. B. Walker in 1885,[211] merged with the Hennepin County Library system in 2008.[212] Fifteen branches of the Hennepin County Library serve Minneapolis.[213] The new downtown Central Library designed by César Pelli opened in 2006.[214] Ten special collections hold over 25,000 books and resources for researchers, including the Minneapolis Collection and the Minneapolis Photo Collection.[215]

Minneapolis Public Schools enroll over 35,000 students in public primary and secondary schools. The district administers about 100 public schools, including 45 elementary schools, seven middle schools, seven high schools, eight special education schools, eight alternative schools, nineteen contract alternative schools, and five charter schools. With authority granted by the state legislature, the school board makes policy, selects the superintendent, and oversees the district's budget, curriculum, personnel, and facilities. In 2017, the graduation rate was 66 percent.[266] Students speak over 100 languages at home and most school communications are printed in English, Hmong, Spanish, and Somali.[267][268] Some students attend public schools in other school districts chosen by their families under Minnesota's open enrollment statute.[269] Besides public schools, the city has more than 20 private schools and academies, and about 20 additional charter schools.[270]

University of Minnesota teaching art museum, teaching hospital, and student union (left to right)

Minneapolis's collegiate scene is dominated by the main campus of the University of Minnesota, where more than 50,000 undergraduate, graduate, and professional students attend 20 colleges, schools, and institutes.[271] The university offers free tuition to students from Minnesota families earning less than $50,000 per year.[272] The graduate school programs with exceptional, top-five national rankings in 2020 were health care management, nursing, midwifery, pharmacy, and clinical psychology.[273] The university has unusual constitutional autonomy that has existed in three US states since 1851, when the provision was included in Minnesota's constitution.[274]

Augsburg University, Minneapolis College of Art and Design, and North Central University are private four-year colleges. Minneapolis Community and Technical College and the private Dunwoody College of Technology provide career training. St. Mary's University of Minnesota has a Twin Cities campus for its graduate and professional programs. The large, principally online universities Capella University and Walden University are both headquartered in the city. The public four-year Metropolitan State University and the private four-year University of St. Thomas are among post-secondary institutions based elsewhere that have campuses in Minneapolis.[275]

Metro Blue Line downtown at Government Plaza

Minneapolis has two light rail lines and one commuter rail line. The Metro Blue Line connects the Mall of America and Minneapolis–Saint Paul International Airport in Bloomington to downtown, and the Metro Green Line travels east from downtown through the University of Minnesota campus to downtown Saint Paul. Hundreds of homeless people nightly sought shelter on Green Line trains until overnight service was cut back in 2019. In 2020, a rise in crime on the light rail system led to discussion in the state legislature on how to best address the problem.[299][300] An extension of the Green Line that will connect downtown Minneapolis with the southwestern suburbs is expected to open in 2023.[301] An extension of the Blue Line to the northwest suburbs re-entered the planning stages for a new route alignment in 2020.[302] The 40-mile (64 km) Northstar Commuter rail runs from Big Lake through the northern suburbs and terminates at the multi-modal transit station at Target Field using existing railroad tracks.[303] Public transit ridership in the Twin Cities was 91.6 million in 2019, a three-percent decline over the previous year, which is part of a national trend in falling local bus ridership. Ridership on the Metro system remained steady or grew slightly.[304]

In 2007, the Interstate 35W bridge over the Mississippi, which was overloaded with 300 short tons (270,000 kg) of repair materials, collapsed, killing 13 people and injuring 145. The bridge was rebuilt in 14 months. Only one quarter of the US's structurally deficient bridges had been repaired ten years later.[305]

The Minneapolis Skyway System, 9.5 miles (15.3 km) of enclosed pedestrian bridges called skyways, links 80 city blocks downtown with second-floor restaurants and retailers that are open on weekdays.[306] Minneapolis has 82 miles (132 km) of trails for walking and biking.[307] Off-street facilities include the Grand Rounds Scenic Byway, Midtown Greenway, Little Earth Trail, Hiawatha LRT Trail, Kenilworth Trail, and Cedar Lake Trail.[308] Bicycle-sharing provider Nice Ride Minnesota planned expanded capacity in 2019.[309]

Minneapolis–Saint Paul International Airport (MSP) is served by 18 international, domestic, charter, and regional carriers, and is the headquarters of Sun Country Airlines.[310] As of 2019, MSP is also the second-largest hub for Delta Air Lines, which operates more flights out of MSP than any other airline.[311]

Abbott Northwestern Hospital was founded in 1882.

Abbott Northwestern Hospital, University of Minnesota Medical Center, Hennepin Healthcare, Minneapolis VA Medical Center, Shriners Hospitals for Children, Children's Hospitals and Clinics, University of Minnesota Masonic Children's Hospital, and Phillips Eye Institute serve the city.[312] The Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, is 87 miles (140 km) from Minneapolis.[313]

Cardiac surgery was developed at the university's Variety Club Hospital, where by 1957, more than 200 patients—many of whom were children—had survived open-heart operations. Working with surgeon C. Walton Lillehei, Medtronic began to build portable and implantable cardiac pacemakers about this time.[314]

Hennepin Healthcare, a public teaching hospital and Level I trauma center, opened in 1887 as City Hospital, and has also been known as Minneapolis General Hospital, Hennepin County General Hospital, and HCMC.[315][316] The Hennepin Healthcare safety net counted 643,739 clinic visits, and 111,307 emergency and urgent care visits in 2019.[317]

The Mashkiki Waakaa'igan Pharmacy on Bloomington Avenue dispenses free prescription drugs and culturally sensitive care to members of any federally recognized tribes living in Hennepin and Ramsey counties, regardless of insurance status.[318] The pharmacy has nearly 10,000 registered patients and is funded by the Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa.[318]

A snow emergency

"Ambassadors", who are identified by their blue-and-green-yellow fluorescent jackets, daily patrol a 120-block area of downtown to greet and assist visitors, remove trash, monitor property, and call police when they are needed. The ambassador program is a public-private partnership with a $6.6 million annual budget that is paid for by a special downtown tax district.[319]

Xcel Energy supplies electricity, CenterPoint Energy supplies gas, CenturyLink provides landline telephone service, and Comcast provides cable service.[320] The city treats and distributes water, and charges a monthly fee for trash removal.[321]

After each significant snowfall, called a snow emergency, the Minneapolis Public Works Street Division plows over 1,000 miles (1,609.3 km) of streets and 400 miles (643.7 km) of alleys—counting both sides, the distance between Minneapolis and Seattle and back.[322] Ordinances govern parking on plowing routes during these emergencies, as well as snow shoveling.[323]

Minneapolis police clearing barricaded streets, 2021

The first chief of the Minneapolis Police Department was appointed in 1867.[324] In 1889, the force employed 200 officer who patrolled the city mostly by foot beats, and patrolled outlying areas on horses.[324]

The city is currently divided into five police precincts; the crime investigation bureau includes a forensics unit, special crime unit, and violent crime unit.[325][326] There is a police reserve, composed of community volunteers.[325] The force employed 890 sworn officers in June 2020, and had been reduced to 626 sworn officers by June 2022.[327] In June 2022, the Minnesota Supreme Court ruled that Minneapolis must hire more police officers, or explain in court why it cannot.[327]

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• Cheney-Rice, Zak (May 29, 2020). "There's Nothing Confusing Here". New York Magazine.
• Hinton, Elizabeth (May 29, 2020). "The Minneapolis Uprising in Context". Boston Review.
• Holder, Sarah (June 5, 2020). "Why This Started in Minneapolis". Bloomberg CityLab.
• Nathanson, Iric (2010). Minneapolis In the Twentieth Century: The Growth of an American City. Minnesota Historical Society Press. ISBN 978-0-87351-725-6.
• Weber, Tom (2020). Minneapolis: An Urban Biography. Saint Paul, MN: Minnesota Historical Society Press. ISBN 978-1681341613.