Mill Ruins Park

44.980358333333 - 93.257822222222Koordinaten: 44 ° 58 ' 49.29 "N, 93 ° 15' 28.16 " W

Mill Ruins Park is a park in the center of Minneapolis, Minnesota, on the west side of Saint Anthony Falls of the Mississippi River. The park highlights the history of grain mills in Minneapolis and shows the ruins of several abandoned mills.

The park is the result of an archaeological study of the Saint Anthony Falls Historic District, which is registered since 1971 in the National Register of Historic Places. In 1983, had been considered to extend the West River Parkway along the western shore on the Mississippi River in downtown Minneapolis. The former County Archaeologist Scott Anfinson of the Minnesota Historical Society has developed a proposal to make the archaeological sites accessible along the route along the riverside. A series of test excavations revealed a wide variety of locations containing various interesting properties. In the vicinity of Bassett 's Creek was found the foundations of two sawmills and a locomotive shed, while the investigation near the Hennepin Avenue brought the foundation stones of the Great Northern Railway Union Depot and the tower foundations of the first and second Hennepin Avenue Bridge to light. In the mill district, archaeologists found evidence that more extensive remains of the mill foundations and the channel system exist that hydropower zuführte.

The beginning of archaeological investigations in the 1980s served to preserve the ruins in front of complete destruction that these threatened as a result of the road construction project. Later, in the 1990s, the focus of the environmental influences directed away towards the availability of the ruins for purposes of illustration of their value. All ruins were made ​​available to the public and the aim was to create value for education, tourism and commercial development of the area. The excavations for Mill Ruins Park began in 1998 and lasted until 2001. The work also included the stabilization of the remains of the burned down in 1991, Washburn A Mill, which was a part of the Mill City Museum.

Together with the remains of several mills and other industrial buildings, also two stone piers and several iron girder of a Stahlfachwerkonstruktion the Minneapolis Eastern Railroad are preserved in the park. The guidance of the lower waters of the hydropower channel is also clearly visible, and the flow of the water was restored to the channel. Signs on the sidewalks explain the ruins and the history of the site.