St. Anthony Falls

St. Anthony Falls is the only major, natural waterfall on the Mississippi River. It’s located in Minneapolis, just downstream from Nicollet Island.

The falls were known to the tribes of the area by various names: Kakabikah (“Waterfall over a cliff”) to the Ojibwe, Minirara (“Curling water”) and Owahmenah (“Falling water”) to the Dakota. In 1680, Father Louis Hennepin became the first European to view the falls; he named them “St. Anthony Falls” after his patron saint, Anthony of Padua. Today the entire area is part of a national historic district.

Geology

The falls first appeared about 10,000 years ago and several miles downstream, where Fort Snelling sits astride the confluence of the Mississippi and Minnesota rivers. At the time the Mississippi flowed into a huge glacial river known as the River Warren, which carved the valley that the Minnesota flows through today.

In the centuries since the water has cut its way down and backward through the sandstone and limestone to its present location and height (about 76 feet total, broken up by dams and locks).

Industry

The falls were first used to generate power in 1848, when they were partly dammed for use by a sawmill. Demand for power boomed, leading to further damming and the excavation of vertical shafts to increase usable water flow. That led to increased erosion and ended in the 1869 collapse of an underwater tunnel, which washed away a large chunk of what was then Hennepin Island (it's now part of the shoreline). Fearing that the falls might collapse altogether, the government built the dams and concrete apron that protect the falls today.

Navigation

Indians established a portage trail around the falls, carrying canoes from a spot near the Southeast Steam Plant to a spot above the falls. That remained the only way to reach the upper Mississippi until 1948, when the Army Corps of Engineers began building a series of locks and dams. Though small, they allow limited commercial shipping on the upper river.

The falls in 1857. Photo: Minnesota Historical Society.