to
Update
is a city in Goodhue County, Minnesota, United States, on the Mississippi River. The population was 16,116 at the 2000 census. It is the county seat of Goodhue County. Red Wing is home of Red Wing Shoes, the Riedell Ice and Roller Skates and Red Wing Stoneware. The Cannon Valley Trail has its eastern terminus in Red Wing. Treasure Island Resort & Casino is on the nearby Prairie Island Indian Reservation. The National Trust for Historic Preservation placed Red Wing on its 2008 distinctive destinations list, which adds 12 communities annually nationwide. Red Wing was added for its "impressive architecture and enviable natural environment." Red Wing is connected to Wisconsin by Red Wing Bridge (officially named the
); it carries U.S. Route 63 over the Mississippi River and its backwaters.
In the early 1850s settlers from Mississippi River steamboats came to Red Wing to farm the lush fields in Goodhue County. They grew wheat, annual crop of which could pay the cost of the land. Before the railroads crisscrossed the territory, Goodhue County produced more wheat than any other county in the country and in 1873 Red Wing led the country in the amount of wheat sold by farmers. The warehouses in the port of Red Wing could store and exported more than a million bushels of wheat. Once the railroads connected southern Minnesota with Minneapolis and Saint Anthony, where the largest flour mills were built, the port at Red Wing lost prominence. In the last half of the 20th century, the United States Army Corps of Engineers built locks and dams and deepened the channel in the river. These reinvigorated river traffic for shipping grain and coal, however the tourist trade has never returned.
The first settlers in town built small mills, factories, and workshops, similar to ones they were familiar with in New England where many came from. Immigrants from Germany, Ireland, and Sweden were also skilled craftsman. Some early and persistent industries are tanning and shoe-making. Other businessmen made farm equipment, bricks, barrels, boats, furniture, pottery, and buttons. Consumables included beer and lumber. Service industries including stone-cutting, hospitality, and retailing. The Saint James Hotel remains a working token of the earlier time.
Red Wing was once home to Hamline University, founded in 1854 as the first institution of higher education in the state of Minnesota. It closed in 1869 because of low enrollment due to the American Civil War. It was chartered in St. Paul in 1871 and reopened there in 1880.
Red Wing Seminary was a Lutheran Church seminary. Red Wing Seminary was the educational center for the Hauge's Norwegian Evangelical Lutheran Synod in America, commonly known as the Hauge Synod. The Hauge Synod had opened the seminary in 1879. Red Wing Seminary was in operation until 1917.
Red Wing also was the home of Gustavus Adolphus College, a private liberal arts college of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America (ELCA). The college was founded in Red Wing in 1862 by Eric Norelius, but moved to East Union in 1863 before settling in St. Peter in 1876.
The Red Wing pottery and stoneware industry developed on the northwest of the city, close to Hay Creek. It used clay from the area of the Hay Creek headwaters, close to Goodhue, near a hamlet named Claybank. A railroad branch line was built to carry clay to Red Wing. The factory buildings remain, but only traces of the railroad, abandoned in 1937, are left.