ABANDONED - HISTORICAL MILL RUINS - Mill City Park - Downtown Minneapolis - Matt's Rad Show 

I am originally from St. Paul, Mn. And yes to what asked. Trucks would come and trains to unload all the grain, and the big stone circle was used to make the grain into flour. Glad you came here so many great memories.

Great video! Very informative for those who have never been. I also love the fact that you did research on the old mill and have Learned a lot more while being there.

I work at an apartment building in downtown St. Paul that has a secret door that goes into the tunnels. Unfortunately, our tunnel entrance is bricked up but you can still see the entrance. It's really cool!

There used to be a mill where the Guthrie is, and on the other side is the 35 bridge memorial park, which if people don't the collapse happened just down stream from there. Gotta love the 612, we grew up with this little bit of history...

Wow amazing video Matt, I miss and love minnesota very much!! Thank you very much!

Amazing! I'm visiting and I'm grateful for your Conant

Great vid man!!!

This was a GREAT VIDEO! Thank you! I happen to be doing a paper for a college labor history class (in Boston) about North Dakota farmers and the Non Partisan League in the 19-teens and early 20s, and seeing as all ND (rail)roads seemed to lead to Minneapolis once upon a time, I got really interested in the milling industry in Minneapolis. Believe it or not, I had this very quaint image of New England grist mills--little mills--and just went WOW when I saw the massive size of the mills in the Twin Cities. Silly that I had the image of the historic grist mill in my town even after reading that Washburn & Crosby Mills processed what was considered the best flour, not just in the U.S., but all over the world. Millions of bread loaves worth of flour a day came out of those mills. I mean, wow. Really. (Of course, what made the flour so desirable is that Washburn & friends developed the technique to make it nice and white. Yup. Took out the bran, took out the germ--because Americans then (as now) were, sadly, pretty "white bread"... And the hard spring wheat that grew best in the northern Plains came from the Russian Steppes--and Americans did not like the dark color of the flour --so they wouldn't buy it. Until Washburn bleached it. Anyway, again I LOVE this film! Thank you, Matt! --Brenda from UMass, Boston :)

I always referred to that area as the dam. Me and my parents used to go there all the time. Awesome video, and the bridge is called stone arch bridge

Back in the day, before there was a Mill City museum, we found a huge underground 1950's fallout shelter over there on the museum side of the river.

Just to clarify, the Washburn A building explosion occurred in 1878. It was rebuilt and opened in 1880. It was closed in the 1960’s, and remained vacant until 1991 when a fire destroyed the building. What was left after the 1991 fire is what you see today. It’s still an interesting story, but the current ruins are not from the 1878 explosion.

Thanks for another great adventure. I like how they let people explore the ruins and have built a museum around them.

Take a shot everytime he says cool lol.. good video dude . I was just in Minneapolis but didn’t have time to stop here . Did minniehaha falls instead . So thanks for sharing

That's the stone arch bridge! I used to explore the tunnels right underneath there. Theres probably miles of underground tunnels and waterways. Right where the park is that you're wandering around in during the beginning used to have huge abandoned buildings there when I was a kid. It used to be so scary down there! Parts still are lol I used to hang out down there a lot. Kinda miss it, honestly. Anyways nice video!

Cool video & look into the past, enough to spark memories. I never knew Minneapolis had so much varied history & sites to visit. And you are the guy who finds and explores them for us, what a guy. You're right about the flour of course - all it takes is another kind of spark to set off the flour dust (it has to be airborne) - the glucose is the combustible part that ignites the explosing So they have lots of equipment & regulations to keep it from happening of course but nothing is foolproof and every so often conditions happen that result in an explosion anyway. I grew up in a house that was just a block and a half or so from a big flour mill you could see from our front porch. Thankfully no explosion ever happened there that I know of but I do know of one that happened in a town about 30 miles north and 3 or 4 people died. Anyway the house I grew up in was the one my grandfather bought after my grandmother died and he and his kids - 3 boys and 2 girls (one of them my mother) - moved into town and his 3 sons got jobs at the mill so I suspect its location had a lot to do with him choosing that house. My grandfather sold the house to my mom and dad when they got married (and my father told me the first thing he did was paint if white to coverup the boxcar red it used to be). Workers at the mill and factories had their work hours regulated by a whistle that blew twice a day at noon and & 4 o'clock -- lunch and quitting time. One of my earliest memories is being outside hearing the 4 o'clcock whistle and seeing my father about 5 minutes later coming up the rickety old brick sidewalk that lead to our house. Sometimes he'd have a candybar in his pocket just for me if I asked. And the whistle at noon on Friday brought my dad and my uncle to the house for lunch because it was Friday NO MEAT and my mom would fix salmon patties - my aunt and my cousins would be there too and its one of my best memories I was crazy about my aunt. were all there together all because of the flour mill even though my dad & uncle worked at the steel foundry a few blocks further on. My ex with whom I have 2 sons worked at that same flour mill. After we met over a decade later and eventually married - my parents bought a new house and we moved in and that's where our brand new baby boy lived the first year of his life. Thinking back salmon patty Fridays with my cousins and all were some of the happiest times of my life. And maybe none of it would've happened but for my grandfather buying the house by the flour mill. Thank you and your video for helping me remember.

Beautiful engineering. Thanks for sharing.

Those brick bridge arches are a work of art and like a picture frame on the past ! Railroads and mills went together; BURLINGTON NORTHERN, that's the same railroad that we had just a few blocks away in my hometown. You're right that door still there in the middle of that wall really gets your imagination going. How many people went thru that door over time? I have heard of those big old mills that so many towns seemed to have, referred to as Palaces of the Midwest. That view of the river is awesome, the power to give to life and power to take it away; got to give them their due.

Love it!!! You don't see many ruins in American historical sites. This was so awesome! I loved it! You got some incredible shots! So surreal to think how much happened within the remnants of those buildings. To have been such an epicenter for such a huge industry to now just be a pile of crumbling wall facades. Glad to see they are doing their best to keep the history of it in tact. Such a great adventure video! Thanks for sharing it with us! It's always so amazing to find amazing history in your own backyard :) It makes my history nerd heart so happy!!! I'm Loving it! Looking forward to more adventures! Keep living the dream!!!

my grandfather ran a water powered mill in north carolina, i have a picture of the inside of the mill. The saying, 'keep your nose to the grindstone' came from that, because if the flour dust was starting to burn, you would smell it & yes, many mills did explode from spontaneous combustion of the flour dust. My guess is that what once started as a wheel at the mill turned into the wheels in the water, because they worked bettter & faster especially if you had high production. I've always been interested in old mills & tried to save our local one in tennessee, but unfortunately, it was torn down several years ago. ty for the video! (they also made moonshine at the old mills w/the corn ground there)

Also, if you haven't been to the Wabasha Street Caves in downtown St. Paul you should definitely check them out. They're your kind of place!

Great job Matt! I learned a lot watching this.

At one time, there were +150 Flour Mills, spread along the Mississippi River, in Minneapolis. A Flour Mill exploded from so many particles of flour dust, which could become so thick, one could barely see coworkers around you.

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Very interesting Matt!!

You got some "POWERFUL" shots....great show! #MRS

You can ask at A Mill artist lofts Pillsbury and see if you can see all the creepy tunnels underneath.

Fascinating.

It is a very unique state we live in

Think of all the working-stiffs who came to work all those years ago, seeing some of these same buildings and thought to themselves 'Dang is it MONDAY AGAIN already?."

I live in Minnesota,Minneapolis and I learned from that mill,that Minneapolis was a very important state for manufacturing,milling and baking flour. My family was around when they heard the mill exploded from flour dust. Quite Sad to see and hear. But it’s interesting to see the remains of what the canals used to look like when the mill was still active.

very awesome place..enjoyed it

Your question at 19:36: "I am no historian. So do these all hold the, the grains before they were, they were kinda milled into flour?" "Is that what?" "Is that what these things were full of?" My answer: The silo's were more than likely filled with grains that the train brought in. I worked at a factory for a short while that made sheets of plastic for applications like, seran wrap, magazine sleeve covers, and garbage bags. They received their plastic by train and all the plastic pellets they got from the train cars were put into big silo's. That is where all the assembly lines would take the plastic from. When the final product was completed it was shipped out by semi truck. So I would assume that the silo's at the Flour Mill were filled with grain. The grain was then taken down the assembly line to be ground into flour. Then the flour would be packaged up and loaded into train cars or semi trucks for delivery. That's what would make the most sense to me. I could be wrong. Maybe some silo's were for grain and some were for flour. But I have a hard time believing that they would just dump the flour into a train car to send it to another factory to package it up. But safety and sanitation standards definitely were not as strict back then too. Good episode Matt! Can't wait for the next one!

great video brother,

In the late 90's, we would climb to the top of the gold medal sign.

17:50 lol, you make me laugh. You getting all serious and deep, then...

Interesting we have a town in Oklahoma that is known for its flour as well. Yukon, Oklahoma and their nickname is the Millers.

Ooooooooo I’ve been there!

i just got my senjor pictures done there and there something ab it looking into the big gates and wondering wow thats old and getting the erge to go explore i love 1800s buildings and the industrial revolution had some cool effects on Minnesota

Matt, it’s called the Stone Arch Bridge! Has been since it was first built in 1882 - 1883 …lol Brohiem.!!! 🤣🤣🤣👍🏾👊🏾

cool video!

During the Civil War the army/guard was stationed outside of these many mills protecting the flour capital of the nation incase attack. Losing all these mills at once would have been detrimental to the US.

Have read that St. Paul was once home to F. Scott Fitzgerald. His parents lived in a historic area, Summit St I think. He is quoted as saying the homes were a monstrasity .Would you consider this for a vlog?

I imagine I'll see you walking around Minneapolis some day shooting your videos

Interesting read in regards to the Mill explosion. Yeah it was flour dust that ignited by a dry running mill that caused sparks and Kaboom! www.mnopedia.org/event/washburn-mill-explosion-1878

How did you go to the future and find Minneapolis in 2050

that's called the stone arch bridge lol (i live in Uptown minneapolis)