Winona, Minnesota

Winona is a city located in Winona County, Minnesota. As of the 2000 census, the city had a total population of 27,069. Winona is the birthplace of actress Winona Ryder (Winona Horowitz) and the aviator Max Conrad. It is the county seat of Winona County6. Located in picturesque bluff country on the Mississippi River, its most noticable physical landmark is Sugar Loaf hill. Its annual celebration, "Steamboat Days," is held in the summer. It is home to the headquarters of the Watkins Corporation and Fastenal. Three college campuses are found in Winona: Winona State University, Saint Mary's University, and Minnesota State Colleges - Southeast Technical. Historically a community that was once served by a half-dozen passenger railroads, its current service is the once-daily Empire Builder, an Amtrak service between Chicago and Seattle/Portland. It is also the home of the Great River Shakespeare Festival (founded 2004), and there are plans to build the state-of-the-art Maritime Art Museum of Minnesota, a large river-themed history and art museum with one of its exhibits being the river dredge William H. Thompson, in the city's commercial harbor by 2006.

Early settlements

Evidence gathered by archaeologists tells us that people lived in this valley as early as 9500 B.C. The earliest evidence of human habitation in Winona County is based on the discovery of a Woodland tradition site (circa 800 B.C.-900 A.D.)

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Before its founding by white settlers, Winona was the home of a band of Dakota (Sioux) led by the great Wapasha dynasty. The local tribe was the Medawakantonwan. Their summer homes were made of bark supported by a framework and poles. Their winter residence was a teepee made of about 8 buffalo hides sewn together with deer sinew, a typical teepee was about 12 feet (4 m) high and 10 to 12 feet (3 to 4 m) in diameter, with a fire in the middle the temperature inside the dwelling remained tolerable even in the coldest weather.

Related Topics:
Sioux - Teepee - Deer - Sinew

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Lieutenant Zebulon Pike left Fort Bellefontaine on August 9, 1805 with orders to find the source of the Mississippi. On September 14,1805, he reached the Mississippi Valley near island number 72 (on his map), which would one day be Winona, Minnesota, and recorded his impressions in his log.

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Less than fifty years later Pike's island seventy two was selected by Captain Orrin Smith as a townsite on the west bank of the Mississippi River. For over twenty-five years, Smith had sailed the river between Galena, Illinois and Fort Snelling, Minnesota as owner and pilot of the river packet Nominee. In 1851 Smith learned that the treaties of Traverse des Sioux and Mendota would establish a reservation in the interior of the state, he realized that there would be a rush to develop townsites on the Minnesota side of the river. On October 15, 1851 Orrin Smith became the founder of Winona, by landing his ship's carpenter, Mr. Erwin Johnson, and two other men (Smith and Stevens) with the purpose of claiming title to riverfront and surrounding prairie land. When the town site was surveyed and plotted by John Ball, United States deputy surveyor, it was given the name of Montezuma as requested by Johnson and Smith. Henry D. Huff bought an interest in the town site in 1853. With the consent of Capt. Smith, Huff erased the name of Montezuma and inserted the name of Winona on the plot, a name derived from the Dakota Indian word We-No-Nah, which means "first-born daughter".

Related Topics:
Illinois - Fort Snelling

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