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Written by Administrator
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Monday, 21 July 2008 |
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Southern Minnesota is split between high plains, timbered ravines and slow-flowing Mississippi tributaries in the east, and the drier, flatter prairie and checkerboard farmland of the west. In the scenic southeast , spared a filing down by the last glacial advance, attractive small towns sit along the Mississippi, or on bluffs above it, in the ninety-mile Hiawatha Valley . Mississippi shipping helped sustain easygoing communities like Winona, Red Wing, Lake City (where water skiing was invented about 1922) and Wabasha , all of which share well-preserved old homes and hotels. The agricultural and college center of Northfield , off I-35 thirty miles south of the Twin Cities, annually commemorates the Jesse James gang's foiled attempt to rob the town bank in September 1876. Harmony , almost in Iowa and near Minnesota's largest Amish colony; Lanesboro , with a storybook setting on the hillsides of the Root River; and Mantorville have all kept at least one foot in the nineteenth century. Further west, New Prague and New Ulm were prime targets for the beleaguered Sioux during a six-week war with the US government in 1862.
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Last Updated ( Monday, 21 July 2008 )
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Southern Minnesota 
