Thirty-two sets of train tracks lined the area between Washington Avenue and the Mississippi River. Workers risked their lives daily to cross them. Giant turbines churned water from a diverted canal off of St. Anthony Falls, making use of a seemingly infinite supply of energy. Wheat from across Minnesota, the Dakotas, and Montana was crushed and sifted until what remained was millions of pounds of a white powder necessary in a society without refrigeration.

These are just some of the historical images of the Minneapolis flour boom, brought to life on the Mill City Museum’s special Washburn “A” Mill Tour, offered through May and resuming again in October — outdoor tours are led during the summer months.

The 90-minute tour ventures through doors marked “Emergency Exit Only” for an in-depth look at one of the most influential flour mills ever created — a building that has twice risen from its own ashes and now stands as a National Historic Landmark.

Tour guide Rod Richter stated the importance of what was once the world’s largest flour mill. “In 1880, in downtown Minneapolis, was the first time in the history of the world that the production of a basic food item was industrialized,” he said. “It’s a very big deal.”

So is the $32 million museum that houses its historical remains. Situated at 704 S. Second St., in the heart of hundreds of newly built condominiums, the Mill City Museum overlooks the river from its glass core in the center of the ruins of the Washburn A Mill.

The tour begins with a brief history of the mill in the museum’s public area, where one can see engine remnants and grain silos, and catch glimpses of the downtown skyline through windows created for light and ventilation.

The Washburn A Mill was built in 1874. Only four years later, it was destroyed in an explosion that took 18 lives and “decimated the surrounding area,” according to the Minnesota Historical Society, which administers the museum.

By 1880, C.C. Washburn — who merged his flour company with John Crosby’s to become General Mills in 1928 — had rebuilt the “A” mill as the most impressive of the 13-building mill complex. The rebuilt mill became the largest flour mill in the world until the Pillsbury “A” Mill (the city’s only other National Historic Landmark) was built across the river the following year.

As tour participants descend the stairs, they can look out through a glass wall into the remains of the original building, now called the Ruin Courtyard. The courtyard view gives an impressive look at the limestone walls, virtually the only structures to survive another fire that destroyed the mill for the second time in 1991.

The mill was literally a moving machine, so the engineers who designed it created two free-standing structures. The inside was constructed entirely of wood (which caused the 1991 fire) to withstand movement caused by the milling machines, while the exterior walls were made of limestone.

Continuing through the public part of the museum, participants can see examples of the steel roller machines used to crush the wheat, as well as a turbine used to provide energy to the massive mill. However, the full history of the “A” Mill is not evident in the displays of old flour advertisements, the children’s activities or the baking laboratory, but in what lies behind the closed doors.

Through an emergency exit, the tour continues up a small staircase next to the semi-circular grain elevator. One hundred and twenty feet below the Gold Medal Flour sign, participants are led into a room containing one of the first reinforced poured-concrete supports in the world.

Through a maze of more emergency exits, the tour continues into the engine room, a large open space now converted into the lunchroom for field trippers. The original steam powered engine was purchased from the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair to power the mill during the fall and winter months, when water power was diminished. As Richter put plainly: “You couldn’t rely on the river for power every day of the year.”

Further into the tour, participants ride a glass elevator, which hoists them up to the ninth floor of the museum, once the roof of the old mill. The evening tour offers breathtaking night views of the illuminated riverfront, where the idea of an entire milling district is brought to life by tales of the wool, paper, and saw mills that surrounded the 24 flour mills in the area in 1882.

That sense of amazement is enhanced as the tour continues atop what were nine giant grain bins, on the way to the original storage elevator. The side of a semi-circular grain separator, graffitied with history, accents the most spectacular view of the tour: downtown Minneapolis.

Stories of men drowning in grain bins and workers loosing limbs return the group to the more sobering aspects of the flour milling industry. (According to Richter, Minneapolis became the leader in the design and manufacture of artificial limbs during the flour boom.)

While Richter said the flour industry made Minneapolis much of what it is today, the mill and its history are a little-known treasure to many Minnesota residents. Resident Lori Jacob Fridley took the tour with her husband, two daughters, and her daughter’s friend.
“I didn’t even know it existed,” Fridley said. “[My husband has] lived here all his life and he didn’t even know this was the flour state.”

Her daughter Michelle, an eighth grader working on her National History Day project, decided on the Mill partially because her friend has been to the museum before, but that was not the only thing that drew her to the “A” Mill.

“We picked it because we thought it would be cool,” Michelle Fridley said.
The tour ends with the option of the Flour Tower ride (included in the price of admission). The moving freight elevator takes riders up and down past a narrative of past “A” Mill workers, depicted in three-dimensional scenes on each level. With each story, the human-side of the milling experience comes to life.

Though Richter pointed out that flour milling was the first industry in the world to be completely automated, two million pounds of white flour a day did not make itself. The struggle of the workers, and the history of the Minneapolis flour industry, is remembered in the Mill City Museum’s special Washburn “A” Mill Tour.

April dates and times are:
Saturday, April 7 and 21 at 1 p.m.
Thursday, April 12 at 6:30 p.m.
The cost is $10 for adults, $8 for seniors and college students, and $6 for children ages 6-17 and Minnesota Historical Society members. For more information or tickets, call 612-341-7555 or check out the website, www.millcitymuseum.org.

last revised: April 5, 2007

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