Becoming the Twin Cities: Swindles, Schemes, and Enduring Rivalries (Paperback or Softback)

Whether motivated by visionary ideals or commercial gain or political ambition, many have tried to unite Minneapolis and St. Paul into one city, and all have failed. This book explains why.

Why haven’t Minneapolis and St. Paul merged into one city? In Becoming the Twin Cities, award-winning writer Drew M. Ross uncovers the nineteenth-century history of scheming and self-dealing, social rivalries and political grudges, and utopian idealism and personal ambition that explains how the Twin Cities became the separate cities with different governments and distinct personalities that we know today.

Beginning with the story of Fort Snelling’s founding and Joseph Plympton’s expansion of a reserve around it, Ross follows up with the land-grabbing and money-making schemes of Henry Rice and Franklin Steele, explores the rivalries between local Republicans and Democrats (and their partisan newspapers), and details the battles over the locations and significance of the capitol, the state fair, and the Midway neighborhood. Figures like Lieutenant Zebulon Pike and tavern keeper Stephen Desnoyer, visionary architect Horace W. S. Cleveland, religious leader (and land speculator) Archbishop John Ireland, and the pugnacious publisher Bill King—all had a hand in the push-pull tension that has fundamentally shaped the Twin Cities to this day.

Unlike Fort Snelling’s river confluence location from which the cities were born or the St. Anthony Falls that powered their growth, the Twin Cities do not align to a natural or inevitable division on the map. Instead, people made the border between Minneapolis and St. Paul, attempted to erase it, and ultimately underscored it. Becoming the Twin Cities examines the historical underpinnings of a beloved American metropolitan region’s unique identity. 

Drew M. Ross is a writer, editor, and researcher. For his writing on local history, he won the 2024 Solon J. Buck Award from the Minnesota Historical Society. He lives in St. Paul, Minnesota.