MILL CITY MUSEUM: Minneapolis, Minnesota

View from deck on top floor of the Mill City Museum

Even though I grew up in Minneapolis, I never appreciated how much the flour milling industry contributed to the growth of the city until my recent visit to the Mill City Museum. Built into the ruins of what was once the world’s largest flour mill, the Mill City Museum is located on the historic Mississippi Riverfront. When I visited a few weeks ago with my family, my grandson proclaimed it to be the best museum he’d ever been to, and when I asked him why, he said it was because of all the interactive exhibits.

A series of graduated screens demonstrates how the finest flour sifts to the bottom

At the entrance to the museum visitors are invited to turn the crank of a small rolling machine that crushes the wheat into flour and then shake a set of sifting screens to see how the finest flour comes out at the end. Other hands-on exhibits include a room with models where visitors (mostly kids) can experiment with dam building and water flow, a kitchen where we sampled some delicious bread made with Gold Medal flour, and exhibits with buttons to push that play videos of historic TV and radio ads for General Mills products such as Bisquick and Malt-O-Meal. In other exhibits we learned about the invention of Wheaties and Bisquick, the history of Betty Crocker, and the early years of the Minneapolis milling industry.

Betty Crocker was invented in 1921 to personalize answers to customer letters

For the Flour Tower tour we sat on bleachers in a room-size elevator which stopped at various floors of the former mill where we saw milling equipment, videos of the mill in action, heard comments by former mill workers, and learned about the mill from the guide. At the top we went out to a balcony with a panoramic view of St. Anthony Falls, the Stone Arch bridge, and the east bank of the Mississippi. We then returned to ground level in an outside glass elevator. We finished our visit (after lunch in the museum café) with the movie Minneapolis in 19 Minutes Flat, a humorous and informative look at the growth and development of the city narrated and acted by Minneapolis radio personality Kevin Kling.

Stone Arch bridge over the Mississippi and St. Anthony Falls, power source for the mills

The Mill City Museum is operated by the Minnesota Historical Society inside what was once the A Mill of the Washburn Crosby Milling Company, which, after merging with 26 other milling companies, became General Mills in 1928. When I was growing up I attended Washburn High School in south Minneapolis. Our sports teams were the Millers. I listened to the WCCO radio and television (owned and named after the Washburn Crosby Company); I watched the Lone Ranger and Rocky and Bullwinkle on television (sponsored by General Mills); I ate Wheaties and Cheerios for breakfast; and I learned to cook with the Betty Crocker cookbook. In more ways than I previously realized, my life was impacted by the flour milling industry in Minneapolis.

Growing up, we always had a (much smaller!) box of Bisquick handy for making biscuits, pancakes and waffles.