Your feet are on the only stone arch railroad bridge over the Mississippi in the country. James J. Hill built this bridge in 1883 for his Great Northern Railway empire — twenty-three arches of limestone and granite, curving elegantly upstream to follow the bend of the river. Hill was one of the great railroad barons of the Gilded Age, and the Great Northern was his masterpiece: a northern transcontinental route he built without a single dollar of federal land grant.
For decades, freight trains crossed here carrying flour, wheat, and lumber bound for the world. Passenger service ended in 1929, freight continued until 1978. The bridge reopened as a pedestrian and bicycle crossing in 1994.
From where you stand you have the best possible view of what made Minneapolis rich: St. Anthony Falls just upstream, the ruins of the flour mills on the west bank, and the stone canal system that channeled the falls' power into the engines of industrial America. The river here is not gentle. It drops sixteen feet at the falls and its current runs hard.
Hill understood that this geography was worth more than any land grant.