Portal:Minnesota/Selected article/Archive
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Burnsville (pronounced /ˈbɜrnzvɪl/) is a suburb 15 miles (25 km) south of downtown Minneapolis in Dakota County in the U.S. state of Minnesota . The city lies just south of the Minnesota River. Commonly referred to as South of the River, Burnsville and nearby suburbs comprise the southern portion of Minneapolis-St. Paul, the sixteenth largest metropolitan area in the United States. The U.S. Census Bureau recorded the population of the city of Burnsville at 60,220 people in 2000. The Metropolitan Council estimate for 2006 was 61,048.
Rich in water and parkland, the city has nine lakes, over fifty ponds, the Minnesota riverfront, as well as a section of the Minnesota Valley National Wildlife Refuge, section of Murphy-Hanrehan Park Reserve, and about twenty developed parks. Originally an Irish farming community, Burnsville was the tenth largest city in Minnesota by the 2000 Census and one of the largest suburbs in the metro area with a regional mall, Burnsville Center. Fully built by the late 2000s, Burnsville has begun redeveloping itself by creating a new downtown called Heart of the City and serving as the hub for the Minnesota Valley Transit Authority, providing southern regional bus service to five other suburbs. The majority of the population are white middle-class families.
The name Burnsville is attributed to an early settler and land owner, William Byrne, who's name was sometimes recorded as Burns and later never corrected.[1] Amongst metro area residents, Burnsville is referred to as "South of the River" apart from "the Cities" of Minneapolis-St. Paul. Many local organizations take on this nickname.
The I-35W Mississippi River bridge was an eight-lane, 1,907 feet (581 m) steel truss arch bridge that carried Interstate 35W across the Mississippi River in Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States. Completed in 1967 and maintained by the Minnesota Department of Transportation (Mn/DOT), the bridge was Minnesota's fifth–busiest, carrying 140,000 vehicles daily.
At 6:05 pm on Wednesday, August 1, 2007, during the evening rush hour, the main spans of the bridge collapsed, falling into the river and its banks. Thirteen people died and approximately one hundred more were injured. Immediately after the collapse help came from mutual aid in the seven-county metropolitan area and a multitude of civilians, hospitals, volunteers and agencies. City and county employees managed the rescue using post–9/11 techniques and technology that may have saved lives. As of early 2008, the NTSB has not reached a determination of probable cause for the collapse, but has identified a possible design error from when the bridge was originally built, which may have caused or contributed to the failure.
President of the United States George W. Bush and First Lady Laura Bush, the Secretary of Transportation, Minnesota's United States senators and representatives, and the media traveled to the wreckage during the rescue and recovery. The Federal Government provided funds to help with the costs associated with the collapse and the US SBA offered low-interest loans for those small businesses affected by the collapse.
Within a few days of the collapse, the Minnesota Department of Transportation began planning a replacement bridge, which was subsequently named the St. Anthony Falls (35W) Bridge.
The Minneapolis Post Office is the central post office for the city of Minneapolis, Minnesota in the United States. Located on the west bank of the Mississippi River, the facility extends west to east from Hennepin Avenue Bridge to the Third Avenue Bridge and north to south from the West River Parkway on the Grand Rounds Scenic Byway to First Street. Its ZIP code is 55401.
The post office was built of granite and stone in the PWA Moderne Art Deco style at the cost of $4.5 million or about $64 million in 2006 USD. The main building is 540 feet (165 m) long. Its interior is unchanged and postal customers still utilize its original bronze teller cages and fixtures, marble terrazzo floor and sandstone walls. Perhaps the longest light fixture in the world, a 350 foot (107 m), 16 ton (16256.8 kg) bronze chandelier runs the length of the lobby, originally designed to regulate temperature.
Léon Eugène Arnal, the chief designer for the architects Magney & Tusler, designed the building. Between 1885 and 1946, Magney & Tusler designed the post office, and designed or co-designed the Foshay Tower downtown, the Calhoun Beach Club on Lake Calhoun, the Lehmann Center on Lake Street, the Young-Quinlan Department Store on the Nicollet Mall and the former home of Teener's Theatrical costume and props store on Hennepin Avenue among other buildings in Minneapolis. The firm was later known as Setter, Leach & Lindstrom, acquired by Leo A Daly in 2003.
The original Winnibigoshish Lake Dam was built 1881-1884, in order to regulate the flow of water on the Upper Mississippi River. A constant flow was desired by loggers, fur traders, and millers downstream at St. Anthony Falls. The dam is located in Itasca County in the U.S. state of Minnesota, 408 miles (657 km) above Saint Paul, creating Lake Winnibigoshish, Minnesota's fifth largest lake, at 67,000 acres (27,000 hectares).
At the time of the construction of the original dam, the region was inhabited almost exclusively by Ojibwa Indians, who had lived on the shores of this part of the river for at least several generations, as documented by the explorer, Henry Schoolcraft. The U.S. Army Corp of Engineers used 2,000,000 board-feet (4720 cubic meters) of pine for the dam and related buildings, wiping out large sections of conifer forests. Along the shores were the Ojibwa's hay fields, maple trees, gardens, cranberry marshes, wild rice marshes, villages, and burial mounds. A staple in their diet was fish, which they caught with nets placed in the swift and shallow river current. Construction of the dam raised the water level by 14 feet (4.3 m), not only obliterating the natives' homes and history, but also wiping out their fisheries. Recent archeological research has shown that the burial mounds and ceramic fragments dated from 700–1000 ce. The construction of this dam was a significant milestone in the historical record of white, Western European settlers, Christian missionaries, and commercial interests eradicating the indigenous population from most of Minnesota.
The Dakota War of 1862 (also known as the Sioux Uprising, Sioux Outbreak of 1862, the Dakota Conflict, the U.S.-Dakota War of 1862, or Little Crow's War) was an armed conflict between the United States and several bands of the eastern Sioux or Dakota which began on August 17, 1862, along the Minnesota River in southwest Minnesota and ended with a mass execution of 38 Dakota on December 26, 1862 in Mankato, Minnesota.
Throughout the late 1850s, treaty violations by the United States and late or unfair annuity payments by Indian agents caused increasing hunger and hardship among the Dakota. Traders with the Dakota previously had demanded that annuity payments be given to them directly (introducing the possibility of unfair dealing between the agents and the traders), but in mid-1862, the Dakota demanded the annuities directly from their agent, Thomas J. Galbraith. The traders refused to provide any more supplies on credit. Thus negotiations reached an impasse as a result of the belicosity of the traders' representative, Andrew Myrick.
On August 17, 1862, five American settlers were killed by four Dakota on a hunting expedition. That night, a council of Dakota decided to attack settlements throughout the Minnesota River valley in an effort to drive whites out of the area. Continued battles between the Dakota against settlers and later, the United States Army, ended with the surrender of most of the Dakota forces. An estimated 40,000 white settlers fled their homes and up to 800 white settlers and soldiers died during the month-long uprising.[2] By late December, more than a thousand Dakota were interned in jails in Minnesota, and 38 Dakota were hanged in the largest one-day execution in American history on December 26, 1862. In April 1863, the rest of the Dakota were expelled from Minnesota to Nebraska and South Dakota, and their reservations were abolished by the United States Congress.
Superior National Forest is a national forest of the United States located in the Arrowhead Region of the state of Minnesota between the U.S.-Canadian border and the north shore of Lake Superior. The area is part of the greater Boundary Waters region along the border of Minnesota and the Canadian province of Ontario, a historic and important thoroughfare in the fur trading and exploring days of British North America.
Under the administration of the United States Forest Service, the Superior National Forest comprises over 3,900,000 acres (16,000 km²) of woods and waters. The majority of the forest is multiple-use, including both logging and recreational activities such as camping, boating, and fishing. Slightly over a quarter of the forest however is set aside as a wilderness reserve known as the Boundary Waters Canoe Area (BWCA), where canoers can travel along interconnected lakes and rivers and over historic portages once used by peoples of the First Nations and European explorers and traders.
The National Forest is headquarted in Duluth, which is approximately 150 miles from the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul, but the forest actually begins about 50 miles (80 km) north of Duluth. The forest service office at Ely is the most centrally located station within the forest; Ely is about 240 miles (385 km) from the Twin Cities and 110 miles (175 km) from Duluth.
Minnesota article reaches Featured Article Status!
Minnesota (IPA: [ˌmɪnəˈsoʊtə]) (Audio (US) ) is a state in the Midwestern region of the United States. It is the 12th largest state in the U.S., and the 21st most populous, with over five million residents. Minnesota was carved out of the eastern half of the Minnesota Territory and admitted to the Union as the 32nd state in 1858. While the state's residents have been primarily white, Northern European, and Lutheran, substantial influxes of African, Asian, and Hispanic immigrants have joined the descendants of European immigrants and Native American descendants of its original inhabitants.
