A “Minnesota 150″ item on the Star Tribune’s front page earlier this week noted that Minneapolis had zero miles of paved streets in 1880. The unpaved streets of the day could be a mess, clogged with traffic and road apples and dust or mud or snow. Wooden sidewalks offered pedestrians safer passage — at least until heavy snow fell. If only there had been a way to efficiently clear the walks, one house at a time …

LETTERS FROM THE PEOPLE

To the Editor of the Tribune:

Is there any city ordinance requiring the cleaning of our sidewalks by a given hour each day? If so, why is it not enforced? We are wading through mud, slush, snow, etc., etc., when if every man would at early morning shovel and sweep whenever practicable, we could walk to our business, our boarding places and our churches, to comfort on our broad and beautiful sidewalks. Businessmen would be advantaged, our churches would be better filled, and we should all be materially helped on our pilgrimage way. Let the sidewalks be cleared, every man up and at it over against his own premises.

A PEDESTRIAN

[ There is no ordinance requiring the clearing of snow from the sidewalks of Minneapolis. It is provided that snow or ice shall not be thrown upon the sidewalks, but that which nature deposits may be legally left for nature to remove. As for the streets and alley, the ordinance explicitly permits person to deposit snow or ice in unlimited quantities upon them, provided “the same shall be broken up and distributed evenly over them.” “Pedestrian” will therefore be compelled to wade until nature or the common council comes to the rescue. — ED. ]

Unpaved Hennepin Avenue, looking from Washington Avenue toward the Mississippi River, in 1878. (Photo courtesy mnhs.org)

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 20th, 2008 at 7:08 pm and is filed under Main, Society. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.