A pictorial history of the 30-acre ravine named Swede Hollow in what is now St. Paul, Minnesota.

St. Paul Union Depot was among the busiest and best-known places in the city--one of the largest depots in the nation and St. Paul's link to the world. It had nine platforms, twenty-one tracks, and well over 140 trains coming and going each day. At its peak in the 1920s, the Union Depot processed more than twenty million pieces of mail each year. Construction of the new depot began in 1917, among the burned remains of the previous depot, and was finally...

On brick buildings throughout Minneapolis and St. Paul, overlooked, fleeting symbols chronicle the cities' past. Champion, John Deere, and International Harvester still tout their agricultural equipment, and Gold Medal and Pillsbury Flour remind everyone where these now global companies began. Weathered proclamations from Grain Belt, Jacob Schmidt, and Gluek's Beer offer a glimpse into early local brewing. Ads from Schmitt Music and Dahl Violin Shop...

At 7:00 a.m. on December 9, 1937, St. Paul firefighters battling an arsonist's fire in the abandoned Aberdeen Hotel discovered the badly burned body of a woman. The victim was soon identified as 31-year-old Ruth Munson, a waitress at the Union Depot--a "small-town girl" who had moved to the big city in search of a new life. Using original police records, Ruth's own diary and letters, newspaper accounts, public documents, and other primary sources,...

In 1972, motivated by prejudice in the child welfare system and hostility in the public schools, American Indian Movement (AIM) organizers in Minneapolis and St. Paul and local Native parents came together to start their own community school. While AIM is best known for its national protests and political demands, the survival schools foreground the movement's local and regional engagement with issues of language, culture, spirituality, and identity....