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Winona, Minnesota For Sale By Owner - Local Information
Winona is a city in and the county seat of Winona County, in the U.S. State of Minnesota. Located in picturesque bluff country on the Mississippi River, its most noticeable physical landmark is Sugar Loaf.
The city is named after Princess We-Noh-Nah, daughter of Chief Wapasha (Wabasha) III.
The population was 27,069 at the 2000 census. Its annual celebration, Steamboat Days, is held in the summer. It is known as the stained glass capital of the United States.
Map of Winona, Minnesota FSBO Listings
Additional information about Winona, Minnesota
Evidence gathered by archaeologists indicates that people lived in the valley as early as 9500 B.C. The earliest evidence of human habitation in Winona County is based on the discovery of a Woodland period site (circa 800 B.C.-900 A.D.). The present-day city of Winona was founded on the village of Keoxa. As the seat of the Wapasha dynasty, it was home to a Mdewakanton band of the eastern Sioux. The summer homes of the Keoxa natives 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, typically about 12 feet (4 m) high and 10 to 12 feet (3 to 4 m) in diameter, with a fire in the middle to keep the temperature inside the dwelling tolerable even in the coldest weather.
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.
Less than fifty years later, Pike's island 72 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, and 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 the 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 translates to "first-born daughter".
Winona was settled by non-Native Americans in 1851, and the town was laid out into lots in 1852-3 with growth expanding rapidly over the years. The population increased from 815 in December, 1855, to 3,000 in December, 1856. In 1860 Winona had a population of 2,456, and was third largest city in Minnesota until the late 1880s. Part of the surge in population in 1856 was the fact that land claims became legal in 1855 with the completion of land surveys and the opening of a local federal land office. It was incorporated as a city in 1857.
Growth in Winona was built on a railway and steamboat transportation system, wheat milling, and lumber. In 1856 over 1,300 steamboats stopped at Winona. The railway system grew and the Winona Railway Bridge, built of steel and iron with a steam-powered swingspan over the river, was the second railway bridge to span the Mississippi. The first train crossed on July 4, 1891 and the bridge served the Green Bay & Western (GBW) and Burlington Route for the next 94 years until it was closed in 1985 and dismantled in the fall of 1990. In 1892, a wagon toll-bridge over the Mississippi, a wooden high-bridge, was completed and remained in service until 1942.
During the 1860s southern Minnesota was the greatest wheat producing region in the country and Winona was the main port for shipping Minnesota wheat. By 1870, Winona was the fourth largest wheat shipping port in the United States. In 1899 Bay State Milling was founded, and is still in operation today. John Laird started the first lumber mill in 1855; he later was joined by his cousins James and Matthew Norton in founding the Laird-Norton Co. The Winona sawmills reached their peak production in 1892 when they produced over 160 million board feet (380,000 m³) annually and ranked eighth in production of lumber in the upper Midwest.
Another famous resident of Winona was J.R. Watkins, the man that invented the money back guarantee in 1868 when he started Watkins Incorporated. In the early 1900's he enamed it the J.R. Watkins Medical company and it is now named J.R. Watkins Inc and is one of the oldest companies in the USA still trading. You can visit its museam which is open 6 days a week and tour the huge factory that covers a complete city block. Unfortunately he died before completion of the current factory and offices in 1911, but their design and presence have had some people claim them to be the most beautiful offices in the USA. J.R. Watkins also trades in Canada, China and as of May 2009 in the United Kingdom, Watkins UK.
Winona's population reached 19,714 in 1900, but thereafter declined for some years after the collapse of the lumber industry.
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