Environment | Page 71

Photograph of flour mills and grain elevators overlooking Red Wing’s crowded riverfront, c. 1900.

Red Wing riverfront scene

Flour mills and grain elevators overlook Red Wing’s crowded riverfront, c.1900.

Red Wing

This late 1860s photograph shows barges along Red Wing's Mississippi River waterfront awaiting wheat for shipment to customers downriver.

The newly completed Barn Bluff stairway, shown about 1929, provided hikers a safer trail to the summit. Construction for a 1960 highway bridge caused the destruction of this route but many of its stairs were saved. They became a part of a 1983 staircase to the bluff-top.

photograph depicting a group constructing a path up Barn Bluff

Webster's Way

Red Wing citizens construct Webster's Way, an improved path to Barn Bluff's summit, in spring 1899. A stairway that followed this path would be added in 1929.

postcard photograph showing Barn Bluff limestone formation

Whitney View

This c. 1860 photo shows the west face of Barn Bluff as viewed from the Wisconsin shore of the Mississippi River. Much of the lower portion of the bluff was removed in 1960 for construction of a highway bridge.

He Mni Caŋ (Barn Bluff)

Roughly ten thousand years ago, raging glacial meltwaters created the broad valley of the Upper Mississippi River that we know today. They also helped form one of the river’s most famous and significant landmarks, known in Dakota as He Mni Caŋ (Hill Water Wood) and in English as Barn Bluff.