From Flour Milling to Tourism: The Evolution of Wabasha

        The city of Wabasha, Minnesota, is located in the southeast corner of the state right along the Mississippi River. Established in 1830, it is officially the oldest city in the state of Minnesota. If you walk along Main Street in the downtown area of this small town, you can see several buildings that have a year carved in at the top to mark when they were built in the late 19th century. However, like any other city, Wabasha has evolved over the years to adapt to the times.

        A good example of this evolution is the condominium building that now stands on the grounds of what used to be the Big Jo Flour Mill. Located right along the riverside, the Eagles Landing condos offer a great view of some of the most attractive scenery the city has to offer. They also happen to be only two blocks away from the city's primary tourist attraction--the National Eagle Center. The center began in 1989 as just a group of volunteers who shared views of our nation's emblem species, the bald eagle, from an outdoor observation deck right along the Mississippi River. It has grown significantly from there, first with the opening of a small storefront downtown in 2000 and then by moving into a newly-constructed interpretive center on the banks of the river in 2007. Like the condominiums, the center was built on what had formerly been the site of the old flour mill.[1] As the center has upgraded over the years, there has been a corresponding rise in the numbers of tourists coming to visit.

        It was in 2001, shortly after the addition of the downtown storefront for the National Eagle Center, that the decision was made to tear down the flour mill, which had been closed for several years. The plan was to replace it with condominiums, a hotel, and the National Eagle Center.[2] The mill had been erected back in 1872.[3] For over one hundred years, the city was a reliable provider of consumer and bakery flour until the plant was shut down near the end of the 20th century.

        The Big Jo Flour Mill, also previously known as the Wabasha Roller Mill Company, was one of many mills that contributed to Minnesota's role as the nation's leading flour-producing state over the years. The state had earned the reputation of being a leading producer by the early 20th century. Minneapolis had become the nation's primary flour-producing city by then, with an output that eventually maximized at over twenty million barrels for the crop year of 1915 to 1916. Meanwhile, there were still many small-town mills that stayed in business at that time, including those in the cities of Winona, Red Wing, Mankato, and Wabasha.[4] As a small town, Wabasha never came near the amount of flour production reached by the large city of Minneapolis--the output of the flour mill in Wabasha had only reached 1,200 barrels daily by 1920, which calculates to less than 450,000 barrels annually, almost 50 times fewer than the peak of Minneapolis's output--but, regardless of that comparison, the Wabasha Roller Mill Company was considered "the most important industry in Wabasha."[5]

        As time passed in the twentieth century, the large flour mill companies that originally dominated in Minneapolis spread out to other states. By the end of the 1920s, Minneapolis had already fallen to third in production behind the cities of Buffalo, New York, and Kansas City, Missouri.[6] The city maintained its title of "Mill City" for many years, though, and the state as a whole continued to be a leading producer in the flour milling industry even to modern times. In 1994, Minnesota was ahead of every other state in its daily milling capacity, but the milling industry was no longer centralized in Minnesota as it had been earlier in the century; by then, the state provided only one-tenth of the nation's flour production. The company of Con Agra, which was by then the nation's leading flour-producing company, had developed a mill in Hastings that surpassed the mills in Minneapolis and became the fourth largest mill in the nation.[7]

        Con Agra also owned the Big Jo Flour Mill in Wabasha at that time. However, after many workers had been moved to the Hastings plant in the early 1970s and the production from Wabasha's flour mill gradually declined, the mill quit operation for good in the final decade of the 20th century. No longer providing business for the town, the Big Jo Flour Mill stood for several years as just "an eyesore", in the words of former Mayor Peter Klas, until it was demolished in 2001.[8] The city set behind its long-held position as a contributor to the successful flour milling industries of Minnesota and focused instead on increasing its success in tourism.

        To this day, the National Eagle Center continues to draw tourists from around the nation and is considered by many to be the best of the attractions the town has to offer. As for the Eagles Landing condominiums, they have stood along the riverside in place of the Big Jo Flour Mill for over a decade now. The condominiums could be considered an indication of how Wabasha has moved on from its many years in the flour milling business and has come to appreciate and share the beautiful sights and scenery the town has to offer.

Footnotes:

[1] Jacobson, C.J. and Peg Bauernfiend, A Vision Takes Flight: A History of the National Eagle Center, 1989 to 2014, (2014), 56-59.

[2] "Condos break ground in Wabasha," Post Bulletin, August 17, 2005, accessed January 15, 2017, http://postbulletin.typepad.com/kiger/2005/08/condos_break_gr.html.

[3] Curtis-Wedge, Franklyn, et al. History of Wabasha County, Minnesota (Winona: Cooper, 1920), 213.

[4] Lass, William E. Minnesota: A History, 2nd ed. (New York: Norton, 2000), 237.

[5] Curtis-Wedge, History of Wabasha County, Minnesota, 213.

[6] Lass, Minnesota: A History, 238.

[7] Ibid., 241.

[8] "Condos break ground in Wabasha."