RED WING

A short history of Red Wing

In the early 1850s, settlers from Mississippi River steamboats came to Red Wing to farm in Goodhue County. They encroached on traditional territory of the Mdewakanton Sioux. Although many Mdewakanton left for the Lower Sioux Indian Reservation after the Treaty of Traverse de Sioux was ratified in May 1853, settlers burned the lodges of those who remained in April 1854.

The settlers cleared the land for wheat, the annual crop of which could pay the cost of the land. Before railroads were constructed across the territory of Goodhue County, it produced more wheat than any other county in the country. In 1873, Red Wing led the country in wheat sold by farmers. The warehouses in the port of Red Wing could store and export more than a million bushels.

Once the railroads connected southern Minnesota with Minneapolis and Saint Anthony, where the largest flour mills were built, the port at Red Wing lost prominence.

The Aurora Ski Club in Red Wing, founded on February 8, 1887, was one of the first ski clubs in North America, reflecting the skills of Scandinavian immigrants in the area. In the 1880s, Aurora club members introduced what became known as "Red Wing Style" ski techniques, patterned after the Telemark skiing form. The term "Red Wing style" remained in use in the U.S. well into the 20th century. In 1887, Norwegian immigrant Mikkjel Hemmestveit set the first North American ski jumping record, 37 feet, at the Aurora Ski Club's McSorley Hill.

In 1889, the federal government established a Mdewakanton Sioux Indian reservation along the Mississippi River to free up land for settlers. It is now within the city of Red Wing, and is known as the Prairie Island Indian Community.

Red Wing's first settlers built small mills, factories, and workshops like those they were familiar with in New England and the upper Midwest, regions from which many had come. Numerous immigrants from Germany, Ireland, Norway, and Sweden settled in this area, and may were skilled craftsmen. Some early industries were tanning and shoe-making, while other businesses manufactured farm equipment, bricks, barrels, boats, furniture, pottery, and clothing buttons. Consumables included beer and lumber. Service industries including stone-cutting, hospitality, and retailing. The St. James Hotel remains a working token of the earlier time.

Red Wing was once home to Hamline University, founded in 1854 as Minnesota's first institution of higher education. It closed in 1869 because of low enrollment due to diversion of students to the American Civil War. Chartered in St. Paul in 1871, it reopened there in 1880.

Red Wing Seminary was a Lutheran Church seminary, founded in 1879. It was the educational center for Hauge's Norwegian Evangelical Lutheran Synod in America, commonly known as the Hauge Synod. Red Wing Seminary operated until 1917.

Red Wing also was the home of Minnesota Elementarskola, a Swedish elementary school that was the predecessor to Gustavus Adolphus College, a private liberal arts college of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America (ELCA). The school was founded in Red Wing in 1862 by Eric Norelius, moved to East Union in 1863, and then was built in St. Peter in 1873–76.

The Red Wing Pottery and stoneware industry began in 1861, when county potter John Paul discovered the large, glacially deposited clay pit beds in the northwest of the city, close to Hay Creek. The first commercial pottery company, Red Wing Stoneware, was founded in 1877. It used clay from the area of the Hay Creek headwaters, close to Goodhue, near a hamlet named Claybank. A railroad branch line was built to carry clay to Red Wing for this industry. The factory buildings remain, but only traces of the railroad, abandoned in 1937, are left.

Adapted (trimmed) from the Wikipedia article Red Wing, Minnesota, revision 1377397706 by its contributors, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.