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Rochester: An Urban Biography
A concise history of Rochester, featuring stories that are familiar, surprising, and sure to change the way you see the city.
Rochester, Minnesota’s third-largest city, is best known for its world-renowned medical facility, the Mayo Medical Center—yet its history and contemporary life are filled with countless other stories, people, and pivotal moments. Rochester has always been a crossroads. For centuries, Dakota and Ho-Chunk people have lived in this beautiful area around the Zumbro River. The town itself began in 1854 as a stagecoach stop for people traveling between St. Paul, Minnesota, and Dubuque, Iowa.
In this brief and engaging history, Virginia M. Wright-Peterson explores fascinating stories of the the area's indigenous people; the importance of the region's agriculture on the karst, driftless, prairie landscape; the persistent flooding of the Zumbro River; the hidden histories held in the unmarked graves of Potter's Field; the cyclone of 1883 and the famous medical center it spawned; the emergence of an increasingly diverse community; and Destination Medical Center, a twenty-year plan to develop the area as a global destination for health care—and the largest public-private economic initiative in Minnesota’s history.
Cities, like people, are always changing, and the history of that change is the city's biography. This book illuminates the unique character of Rochester, weaving in the stories of place, politics, and identity that continue to shape its residents' lives.
Rochester, Minnesota’s third-largest city, is best known for its world-renowned medical facility, the Mayo Medical Center—yet its history and contemporary life are filled with countless other stories, people, and pivotal moments. Rochester has always been a crossroads. For centuries, Dakota and Ho-Chunk people have lived in this beautiful area around the Zumbro River. The town itself began in 1854 as a stagecoach stop for people traveling between St. Paul, Minnesota, and Dubuque, Iowa.
In this brief and engaging history, Virginia M. Wright-Peterson explores fascinating stories of the the area's indigenous people; the importance of the region's agriculture on the karst, driftless, prairie landscape; the persistent flooding of the Zumbro River; the hidden histories held in the unmarked graves of Potter's Field; the cyclone of 1883 and the famous medical center it spawned; the emergence of an increasingly diverse community; and Destination Medical Center, a twenty-year plan to develop the area as a global destination for health care—and the largest public-private economic initiative in Minnesota’s history.
Cities, like people, are always changing, and the history of that change is the city's biography. This book illuminates the unique character of Rochester, weaving in the stories of place, politics, and identity that continue to shape its residents' lives.
- GenresNonfictionBook Club
180 pages, Paperback
Published August 16, 2022
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
January 21, 2025
Read ahead of doing some work in Rochester to get a handle on the city’s history. Good, concise history. The chapter on the founding of Mayo was fascinating and deserves its own longer treatment.
November 26, 2022
This is the latest book in Minnesota Historical Society Press' Urban Biography series. I don't know Rochester that well as a city, having only taken my dad and wife there for medical appointments at Mayo, but I liked how this author, a life-long Rochester resident brought it out through her research and related her personal story to Rochester's story. The book delves much deeper into its hidden history than more traditional histories.
June 29, 2023
This book had so much more detail and information about the city that I call home. I learned some things that make me think, which is a great way to start conversations about Rochester and how we, as current residents, can work to make it better.
July 8, 2023
"how would you conjugate rochester if it were a verb?"
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews