Saint_Anthony_Falls - Wikiparency

# Saint Anthony Falls **Saint Anthony Falls**, or the Falls of St. Anthony, is a waterfall on the [[Mississippi_River|Mississippi River]] in Minneapolis, [[Minnesota|Minnesota]]. The Dakota called it by several names, among them Owahmenah (falling water) and Haha Tanka (big waterfall).[^anfinson2003] The Franciscan friar Louis Hennepin, who saw it in 1680, renamed it for his order's patron saint, St. Anthony of Padua, and estimated that it plunged 40 to 60 feet.[^mnopedia-hennepin][^nps-ch6] Between Minneapolis and St. Paul the Mississippi once descended faster than anywhere else along its course, more than 100 feet in less than 15 miles.[^anfinson2003] The falls built Minneapolis. [[Hydropower|Water power]] from them drove the sawmills and then the flour mills that made the city the "Flour Milling Capital of the World" from 1880 for fifty years, and in 1882 they powered the first hydroelectric central station in the United States.[^mhs-flour][^nps-ch6] Today the falls are held in place by engineering works that began with a concrete cutoff wall in the 1870s, and part of the river runs through a hydroelectric plant and the University of Minnesota's St. Anthony Falls Laboratory, a center of [[Hydraulic_engineering|hydraulic engineering]] research that can divert up to 300 cubic feet per second of river water for research.[^nps-ch6][^heitkamp] On the Thury spine, Saint Anthony Falls is where Minnesota's [[Water|water]] first went to work, and where the state still studies how water moves. ## History ### Industry Soldiers from Fort Snelling built the first mills at the falls. Commercial milling began after Franklin Steele started work in 1847: by the end of 1848, two up-and-down saws operated on a new dam.[^nps-ch6] The flour mills followed. In 1880 and for 50 years afterward, Minneapolis was known as the "Flour Milling Capital of the World," until in 1930 Buffalo, New York, produced 11 million barrels to Minneapolis's 10.8 million. The Washburn A Mill closed in 1965, and the Pillsbury A Mill was the last riverfront mill to shut down, in 2003.[^mhs-flour] The mills turned [[Water_wheel|water wheels]] and later [[Water_turbine|turbines]], driven by the [[Hydraulic_head|head]] of the falls. ### 1869 collapse of the Eastman tunnel The falls were always fragile. Excavation for a tailrace tunnel under Hennepin Island began on September 7, 1868, and on October 4, 1869, the limestone riverbed collapsed into it.[^nps-ch6] The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers was brought in, and on July 9, 1874, it began building a concrete cutoff wall under the riverbed; the finished wall extended 1,850 feet and contained nearly 15,000 cubic yards of concrete.[^nps-ch6] ### Hydroelectric power production On the evening of September 5, 1882, the falls lit Minneapolis with electricity generated by the first hydroelectric central station in the United States.[^nps-ch6][^anfinson2003] Engineers kept raising the output: by the time a new plant was completed in 1908, the working capacity of turbines at the falls had risen from 13,000 horsepower in the 1880s to 55,068 horsepower.[^anfinson2003] Xcel Energy's Hennepin Island hydroelectric plant, with five turbines and a capacity of 13.7 MW, is licensed by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission until 2034.[^hydroreform] This is [[Hydroelectricity|hydroelectricity]] at its American birthplace. ## Locks and dams Two locks carried barges past the falls. The Lower St. Anthony Falls lock opened in 1956 and the Upper St. Anthony Falls Lock in 1963.[^fmr-locks] Congress ordered the Upper lock closed to navigation in the Water Resources Reform and Development Act of 2014, and it closed on June 10, 2015, chiefly to slow the upstream spread of invasive carp.[^fedreg2014][^mpr2015] ## Geology The riverbed above the falls is a thick layer of hard Platteville limestone over a veneer of shale and mixed sandstone, on top of a deep deposit of soft St. Peter sandstone.[^nps-ch6] Water falling over the edge eroded the soft sandstone beneath, the unsupported limestone collapsed, and the falls moved upstream.[^usgs-miss] The falls began about 12,000 years ago near what is now downtown St. Paul, as the waterfall of Glacial River Warren, the river created when glacial Lake Agassiz broke through its southern moraine.[^usgs-miss][^mnopedia-agassiz] They retreated past the mouth of the [[Minnesota_River|Minnesota River]] and on up the [[Mississippi_River|Mississippi]]. Early geologists estimated the time for the retreat from the confluence at 7,800 to 8,000 years; the current estimate is about 10,000.[^nps-ch1] Since Hennepin's visit in 1680 the falls have moved about 1,500 feet upstream to their present location.[^anfinson2003] ## Historic and commemorative markers The Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board's Mill Ruins Park preserves the foundations of the old mills, and the Minnesota Historical Society's Mill City Museum occupies the ruins of the Washburn A Mill.[^anfinson2003] The falls lie within the Mississippi National River and Recreation Area of the National Park Service.[^nps-ch6] ## In popular culture The earliest known view of the falls was published in Jonathan Carver's *Travels* in 1778, with an Indian encampment above the cataract.[^anfinson2003] An early European account quoted by Anfinson records a man at the falls offering a beaver robe decorated with porcupine quills "in sacrifice to this cataract, which is terrifying and admirable."[^anfinson2003] ## See also - [[Mississippi_River]] - [[Hydropower]] - [[Hydroelectricity]] - [[Spillway]] - [[Hydraulic_engineering]] ## References [^anfinson2003]: Anfinson, John O. (2003). "Spiritual Power to Industrial Might: 12,000 Years at St. Anthony Falls." *Minnesota History* 58 (5–6): 252–269. https://www.mnhs.org/hubfs/v58i05-06p252-269.pdf [^nps-ch6]: National Park Service, Mississippi National River and Recreation Area. "River of History — Chapter 6." https://home.nps.gov/miss/learn/historyculture/river-of-hisory-chapter-6.htm [^nps-ch1]: Madigan, Thomas. "River of History — Chapter 1." National Park Service, Mississippi National River and Recreation Area. https://home.nps.gov/miss/learn/historyculture/river-of-history-chapter-1.htm [^usgs-miss]: U.S. Geological Survey. "Geology – Mississippi National River and Recreation Area." https://www.usgs.gov/geology-and-ecology-of-national-parks/geology-mississippi-national-river-and-recreation-area [^mnopedia-hennepin]: Goetz, Kathryn R. (2013). "Hennepin, Louis (ca. 1640–ca. 1701)." *MNopedia*, Minnesota Historical Society. https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/person/hennepin-louis-ca1640-ca1701 [^mhs-flour]: Minnesota Historical Society, Mill City Museum. "Minneapolis Flour Milling Boom." https://www.mnhs.org/millcity/learn/history/flour-milling [^hydroreform]: Hydropower Reform Coalition. "Hennepin Island P-2056." https://hydroreform.org/hydro-project/hennepin-island-p-2056/ [^fmr-locks]: O'Connor Toberman, Colleen (2022, updated 2026). "Meet our Twin Cities locks and dams." Friends of the Mississippi River. https://fmr.org/updates/land-use-planning/meet-our-twin-cities-locks-and-dams [^fedreg2014]: U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (December 19, 2014). "Closing Upper St. Anthony Falls Lock to Navigation, Located in Minneapolis, MN." *Federal Register*. https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2014/12/19/2014-29716/closing-upper-st-anthony-falls-lock-to-navigation-located-in-minneapolis-mn [^heitkamp]: Heitkamp, Barbara (2017). "The Lab on the River: The St. Anthony Falls Laboratory at the University of Minnesota." *Open Rivers* 6. University of Minnesota Libraries. https://openrivers.lib.umn.edu/article/the-lab-on-the-river-the-st-anthony-falls-laboratory-at-the-university-of-minnesota/ [^mnopedia-agassiz]: Nelson, Paul (2025). "Draining of Glacial Lake Agassiz." *MNopedia*, Minnesota Historical Society. https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/event/draining-glacial-lake-agassiz [^mpr2015]: "Upper St. Anthony lock closing after half a century; blame the carp." *MPR News*, June 8, 2015. https://www.mprnews.org/story/2015/06/08/upper-st-anthony-lock ## References cited - Anfinson, John O. (2003). "Spiritual Power to Industrial Might: 12,000 Years at St. Anthony Falls." *Minnesota History* 58 (5–6): 252–269. Minnesota Historical Society. - Heitkamp, Barbara (2017). "The Lab on the River: The St. Anthony Falls Laboratory at the University of Minnesota." *Open Rivers* 6. https://openrivers.lib.umn.edu/article/the-lab-on-the-river-the-st-anthony-falls-laboratory-at-the-university-of-minnesota/ ## External links - [Mill City Museum](https://www.mnhs.org/millcity), Minnesota Historical Society - [Mississippi National River and Recreation Area](https://www.nps.gov/miss/), National Park Service - [St. Anthony Falls Laboratory](https://cse.umn.edu/safl), University of Minnesota  **Part of the [[WT!Thury_Hydrodynamics_Compendium|Thury Hydrodynamics Compendium]]** — main article for section 32, *Saint Anthony Falls*. Related sections: [[Hydroelectricity]] · [[Mississippi_River]] · [[Hydraulic_jump]].   **Microsim — three.js (Wikitube framework):** *Saint Anthony Falls* <div class="wt-sim" data-src="https://wikitube-3d-microsims.netlify.app/thury/Saint_Anthony_Falls.html" data-title="Saint Anthony Falls"></div> *Built from `MICROSIM_GUIDE/specs/sims/Saint_Anthony_Falls.json`; part of the [[WT!Thury_Hydrodynamics_Compendium|Thury Hydrodynamics Compendium]] set.*  ## Wikipedia : Wikitube **Strict pair:** [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Anthony_Falls) : [Wikitube](https://en.wikitube.io/wiki/Saint_Anthony_Falls) · pinned revision [1372507976](https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=1372507976) · 2026-09-10 ## Previous hub tags Hubs: `Life_Physics`, `Systems`. Portals: [[PORTAL_Thury_Hydrodynamics_Apex_Spine]], [[PORTAL_Energy]]. --- *Thury main articles, wave 2 · 2026-09-10 · drafted · Compendium section 32 · sim pending THY-088.*