Minnesota’s riverfront cities can learn a lot from Stillwater

I suspect no Minnesota city has pulled off a better waterfront transformation than Stillwater, the historic river town east of St. Paul. 

Ostensibly the oldest city in the state, the last few years have seen vibrancy blossom in downtown Stillwater, transforming the St. Croix Riverfront into one of the best public spaces in the east metro. As streets and spaces along the river have become more walkable, Stillwater reveals how removing auto traffic can catalyze public life. 

Thanks to its role in early territorial politics, Stillwater seems like an outlier because of its status as an historical touchstone. But there’s a long list of Minnesota cities, young and old, that continue to have trouble with their waterfronts, thanks in part to both natural forces and industrial history. 

It’s a difficult line to walk, because the very nature of levees create low-density barriers, but the combination of infrastructure and the threat of flooding often leaves cities like Hastings, Winona and Red Wing stymied along the river. It remains a challenge to activate riverfronts in the way that Stillwater has done. But Stillwater might hold lessons for other Minnesota waterfront towns and cities, including large ones like St. Paul and Duluth, which could learn a thing of two about injecting vitality into their waterfront. 

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Stillwater justifiably claims its motto as the “Birthplace of Minnesota.” It began as a key riverboat port and connection to the Wisconsin Territory, and became home to the state’s early lumber milling industry. Every spring, thousands of pine logs floated down the St. Croix River to Stillwater, where they were hewed into pine boards. Stillwater’s economic boom centered on the riverfront, particularly as the railroads arrived throughout the second half of the 19th century. 

For much of the 20th century, Stillwater remained an industrial town centered on its riverfront rail yards. In those years, it was home to munitions and furniture factories, and an ever-changing variety of railroad enterprises. They required a close workforce — sometimes including nearby prison labor — to put in three shifts among the smokestacks, and downtown was built around that relationship.

Planning a riverfront renewal in Stillwater

Today’s tourist enclave represents quite a shift from that era, but it didn’t happen overnight. The idea of transforming the waterfront space had deep roots. Like many cities in the early 20th century, Stillwater commissioned a “city beautiful”-style plan. The result, put together by the firm of Morell & Nichols, envisioned a park-like waterfront as part of a large-scale beautification effort.

The idea then was to clear the railroad and industrial uses from the waterfront and replace them with park space, alongside a parkway road that would parallel the St. Croix. This kind of vision was not that unusual at the time, though execution and implementation were far more rare. For example, business leaders in Minneapolis crafted an even more ambitious comprehensive city plan in 1917. 

In Minneapolis’ case, the outbreak of World War I stopped any possible momentum around that plan, but for Stillwater, the lack of action stemmed more from a decline in industrial activity. For a variety of reasons, factories closed and the industrial waterfront gradually stagnated. It would take another half-century, though, for uses of the waterfront to shift.

In Stillwater, riverfront rail yards remained until at least the 1970s — I could not track down an exact date. Over the last 30 years, they have been gradually removed. The southern railroad went first, clearing the way for well-used surface parking lots. On the north side of downtown, the last train was finally trucked away 10 years ago when the operator of a tourist train called the Zephyr went out of business. Today those tracks are part of a popular bike trail and riverfront park.

Stillwater’s bridge to the future

The other big change for Stillwater has been the shifting use of its iconic “lift bridge” across the St. Croix, which was built in 1930. Where once the old lift bridge served as a traffic-choked bottleneck, today the St. Croix Crossing bridge offers an amazing river-top vista perfect for strolling with a dog or biking with a kid. It’s as big a transformation as you can find in Minnesota, and though pedestrian-only bridges are common elsewhere around the country, they’re still a rarity in the Twin Cities.

The Stillwater example has radically transformed the downtown and, unless you’re trying to drive to Houlton, Wis., it’s for the better. The bridge, now open to people on foot or bicycle, is such a social attraction that it hosted the first interstate Packers/Vikings tug-of-war before one of last season’s games. The Wisconsin fans won that time (though their team did not) but who’s to say which side of the border will take the crown next. 

The bridge is a metaphor for change, and makes me wonder whether or not other waterfronts could see similar turnarounds. Could places currently dominated by highways shift to recreation in ways that trickle out to impact the downtowns as a whole? In Stillwater, the riverfront renaissance has catalyzed an “art alley,” where the previously marginal space has filled with creative murals mingling with café tables. Nearby, Chestnut Street was also closed to cars and opened up to people. 

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The transformation is striking: Today the entrance to the lift bridge is one of the most pleasant places to visit in the Twin Cities metro. Strolling over the bridge with a kid and back to the ice cream shops along Water Street is infinitely more pleasant, now that the threat and nuisance of car traffic has been removed. It’s almost a guarantee that you’ll find people socializing and having fun.

It would be wonderful if other waterfront towns around the state could learn from this lesson and remove cars from the dominant status they almost always occupy. Stillwater came to this realization almost accidentally, following tense debate over the future of the lift bridge and the expansion of Highway 36 into western Wisconsin. 

While the new bridge might be triggering the sprawling development that people had warned of, downtown Stillwater’s riverfront has emerged a clear winner.

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