CITY FA L L S
M
innesota is flatter than the vowels in a Coen Brothers movie. The state’s highest point calls itself a mountain and well, we can let it think that. Now, we’re not the flattest pancake at the diner: Florida, Illinois, North Dakota and Louisiana take the top spots, but Minnesota rounds things out at number five. I bring this up not to evoke mountain envy or deter future ski resorts, but because flatness can put a real damper on one of the most awe-inspiring natural features: the waterfall. Waterfalls are the life of the party, always jumping off the roof straight into the pool. Who doesn’t want to watch water roar off a cliff’s edge and plunge down in a mesmerizing mist? I come from a state with so many waterfalls, they just started naming them Susan and Martin
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A guide to appreciating sometimes hidden urban waterfalls by T R A C Y M U M F O R D
and Annie. And while Minnesota admittedly has fewer vertical water features than my home state, it does have some gems: the North Shore delivers, as do some scattered state parks. But in my tours of Minnesota’s waterfalls, some of the ones I’ve come to love most are within city limits. Some are calendar-worthy; others would only go into a calendar of “So That’s a Waterfall, Huh.” I love them anyway. We all know Saint Anthony Falls—at least, the manmade version of it. What was once a natural waterfall in downtown Minneapolis has been harnessed for more than a hundred years, first to power flour mills and now to power iPhones. The original sandstone structure is now an industrial-chic concrete, thanks to an illfated plan to tunnel underneath the Mississippi
