Meandering Minnesota

On a soft Saturday spring evening, as I walked along Lake Winona in Winona, Minn., I stopped to watch a father and his three daughters head their boat to shore after a sunny day on the lake. Towering above them and reflected in the water was Sugar Loaf, an unusual 85-foot-tall rock formation that sits atop a 500-foot limestone bluff carved by the Mississippi River.

Although Native American tradition says the mountain looked like the cap of Chief Wapasha, the legendary head of the Dakota tribe in the area, it was carved by late 19th-century quarrymen and was a landmark for riverboat pilots.

The scene was a capsule of my journey through southeastern Minnesota — magnificent natural scenery, interesting history and ethnic heritage, and small-town America.

I also discovered medical pioneers, touching stories of orphans and even a kimono shop.

I began my trip on U.S. 61, the Great River Road, which follows the Mississippi River from the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul to New Orleans. More narrow and bluer than farther south, the Mississippi runs through sweeping valleys and past tall limestone bluffs and charming river towns as it makes its way between Minnesota and Wisconsin.

My first stop was Hastings, once a major grain port that rivaled St. Paul in size. Prospects were so bright in 1871 that a large ornate structure was built to house Dakota County government.

“No architectural influence was spared in its construction,” said Frank LaBreck, a local guide and historian, as we stood beneath the large dome of what is now city hall.

The building is a mix of square, orderly German style and elaborate French Renaissance tower domes, Florentine stone arches over windows and Corinthian columns. The neoclassical dome and rotunda were added later.

The building is the focal point of a downtown that reflects the look and pace of a bygone era. LaBreck noted that when the railroad bypassed the town, it “was frozen in the late 19th century and is still that way.”

Another impressive structure that hearkens to past times is the LeDuc House. The house was built during the Civil War in an eclectic Gothic-revival style based on a design in the book Cottage Residences by noted 19th-century landscape architect Andrew Jackson Dowling.

“Can you imagine calling this a cottage?” said Heidi, a guide at the house.

Two years ago, the house, which sat empty for many years, was purchased by the city and opened as a museum operated by the county historical society.

The story of the house and its owners is told in an interesting and entertaining fashion through one of the best introductory productions I have seen in a historic house. A high-definition 15-minute video uses many quotes from the hundreds of letters written by William and Mary LeDuc, especially when he was a Union officer in the Civil War, and from their daughter Alice’s diary.

The video, shown in a picture frame above the fireplace in the library, is part of an object theater. As objects in the room are mentioned, they are illuminated. For example, a fire in the fireplace begins crackling as William writes about starting the first fire in the house in 1865.

Red Wing, another of the great small towns along the river, features two other structures that have been returned to their former glory — the St. James Hotel and the Sheldon Theater.

“They have put it back almost like it was in the 1870s,” said Dorothy Westphal, a local guide, as we entered the lobby of the St. James.

In the late 1970s, the Red Wing Shoe Co. purchased the four-story Italianate brick structure, which opened in 1875, and closed it for a two-year multimillion-dollar renovation.

Each room is named after a riverboat and is individually decorated with Victorian period furnishings and custom-designed quilts. Several new restaurants were added, including the Verandah overlooking the Mississippi where you can sample locally produced Studiwheat cereal.

In 1987, the 1904 Sheldon Theater, with its ornate ivory and gold plaster work and deep red carpets and velvet drapes, was restored and is used for a variety of musical and theatrical performances.

“I call that a jewel box,” said Westphal. “If there is not a show, groups enjoy a tour that includes an old-time media presentation.”

Another historic hotel that is like a step back in time is the Anderson House Hotel in Wabasha. “If you want to go back in time, this is the place,” said Barb Laska, a local step-on guide who showed me around the area.

The hotel, marking its 150th anniversary this year, has antique-furnished rooms and is noted for its jumbo cinnamon and caramel rolls.

The Anderson House may be even more famous for its cats — you can request a cat for your room in the evening, complete with food, water and litter.

“We were going to get rid of the cats,” said Teresa Smith, who purchased the hotel with her husband two years ago. “That lasted less than a week. Nine out of 10 people asked ‘Where are the cats?’”

Movie-star status

Although most of the scenes were shot in other locations around the region, the early 1990s movies Grumpy Old Men and Grumpier Old Men were set in Wabasha and helped put the town on the national map.

“That is what started our tourism,” said Laska. “We were a sleepy little town before that.”

Sleepy or not, Wabasha has two one-of-a-kind attractions downtown.

The National Eagle Center has three resident eagles — Harriett, Angel and Columbia — that have been injured and can’t be released in the wild.

“Our primary mission is education,” said volunteer Bob Snitgen as Harriett perched on his arm on an outdoor patio that overlooks the river. “We take them to schools, nursing homes, VA hospitals, Native American events.

“You take one of these out of its crate, and you get kids’ attention.”

Just two doors down is Wind Whisper West, a kimono shop filled with brightly colored and intricately designed Japanese kimonos.

“We are the only store in the world,” said owner Richard Fuller, who has a stock of more than 2,000 kimonos.

Fuller said that more than half of his kimonos are for weddings and are part of a 1,500-year-old tradition.

“No two kimono are the same,” he said. “Everything has meaning.”

Fuller handed me a magnifying glass for a close look at the intricate handiwork that goes into the elaborate designs on the kimonos, most of which are now purchased as pieces of art.

The 70-year-old dredge boat William A. Thompson will be permanently docked at the museum next year and open for tours.

Winona has several museums covering its rich heritage, including the Polish Cultural Institute, which houses artifacts, family heirlooms, religious articles and folk art, and the Winona County Historical Society Armory Museum, located in a former armory downtown and one of the largest historical society museums in the state.

Apple Blossom Trail

From Winona, you can take the Apple Blossom Trail through the heart of Minnesota’s apple country to LaCrescent.

“It is a very apple-oriented community,” said Rosanne Buehler, owner of Leidel’s Apples, as we drove past rows of apple trees high on bluffs with sweeping views of the Mississippi and the Wisconsin farmland on the other side. “There are eight orchards in the area, and a lot of the businesses have apple in their name. The streets are named for apple varieties.

“The limestone in the soil gives our apples their unique flavor,” said Buehler. “Also, the water drains well off the hills. Apples don’t like wet feet.”

Buehler does tours of the area from August to October and lets groups sample some of the 30 varieties she grows. A group of local women, the Apple Annies, will also sing for groups.

Apples might not like wet feet, but water has created a couple of area attractions: Niagara Cave and Mystery Cave.

“It was formed by an underground river, which creates a different look,” said Mark Bishop, owner of Niagara Cave.

One-hour guided tours of the cave take you past the active stream that is still forming the cave, a 60-foot waterfall, a wedding chapel, fossils in the walls, cave formations and an echo chamber that “people get a big kick out of.”

There are more than 250 steps involved on the tour. Sylvia Leitzen, executive director of Historic Bluff Country Inc., said Mystery Cave, located near Historic Forestville, a living-history farmstead, is a more accessible alternative for groups with mobility issues.

A monument to the more than 10,000 children who lived at the Owatonna state orphanage stands outside the orphanage museum.
Courtesy Owatonna Area Chamber of Commerce and Tourism
The caves are in the heart of Minnesota’s Amish Country, where more than 100 Old Order Amish families live and farm. Bishop also does step-on-guide tours of the Amish farmland.

“We stop at several farmsteads where there are different products for sale,” he said. “We cover their history and culture. We go in one house. She does quilts and loves buses.”

There are a couple of other companies with Amish tours in Lanesboro, considered one of the top small art towns in the country. I hopped aboard Molly the Trolley for a tour that drove past downtown art galleries and nearly 20 bed-and-breakfasts, many located in large Victorian houses.

The tour also includes the state fish hatchery on the outskirts of town, where more than 750,000 rainbow trout and 450,000 brown trout are raised each year for the state’s ponds, lakes and streams.

Rochester is home to the world-famous Mayo Clinic. During an hour-and-45-minute tour, I learned the fascinating history of the clinic, started in the late 19th and early 20th centuries by brothers Will and Charlie Mayo, and its wide-ranging work.

I had envisioned the Mayo Clinic to be a sprawling complex of buildings on a tree-shaded campus. But the main complex consists of 15 buildings smack in the middle of downtown Rochester. There are another 75 ancillary buildings around town.

The downtown buildings are connected with an underground pedestrian subway that is filled with stores and shops. learned that the basics of a patient identification system that was developed in 1907 are still in use. The first patient started with No. 1, and today the numbers start with six — as in million.

The clinic complex is filled with priceless artwork, and there are separate tours that deal with the art and architecture.

The tour also includes the ornate 1928 Plummer Building, the clinic’s oldest. There are 17 types of marble in the building, and we rode the original elevators with detailed, hand-carved bronze doors, to the third floor, where the offices of “Dr. Will” and “Dr. Charlie,” as they are called around there, are preserved.

Cases contain artifacts that include operating instruments used by the brothers and the Nobel Prize won by two doctors at the clinic for developing cortisone.

The Sheldon Theater in Red Wing has been restored to its 1904 glamour.

Two daily tours are offered of the clinic’s downtown complex, and the Rochester Convention and Visitors Bureau has recently been able to arrange for groups to schedule special tours.

Other attractions are Minnesota Landscape Arboretum, the Mall of America, the American Swedish Institute, the Minnesota Zephyr and Chanhassen Dinner Theatres.

By Herb Sparrow
Courtesy of The Group Travel Leader