Qualla: Little Falls, Minnesota

Little Falls, Minnesota: Introduction

Thu, 05 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Dustin Simmonds at English Wikipedia, CC BY 3.0. Little Falls keeps its most telling detail in its sister-city relationship. Since 1987, this central Minnesota town of about 9,000 people has been twinned with Le Bourget, France -- the Paris suburb where Charles Lindbergh landed the Spirit of St. Louis on May 21, 1927, completing the first solo nonstop transatlantic flight. Lindbergh grew up on a farm at the edge of town, swimming in the Mississippi River that still bisects downtown Little Falls. The connection between a small river city in Morrison County and one of the defining moments of the twentieth century is not incidental. It is the thread that runs through everything here, from the name of the local airport -- Lindbergh Field -- to the elementary school named after him, to the state park where his restored boyhood home sits on a bluff above the water.

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Image: Dustin Simmonds at English Wikipedia | CC BY 3.0

Little Falls, Minnesota: Built on a Drop in the River

Thu, 05 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Elkman, CC BY-SA 3.0. The city takes its name from an eleven-foot drop in the Mississippi River -- modest falls that nonetheless generated enough waterpower to drive an economy. James Green, the first permanent settler, built a dam and sawmill by the falls in 1849 to supply lumber for the construction...

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Image: Elkman | CC BY-SA 3.0

Little Falls, Minnesota: From Lumber to Boats to Nobel Prizes

Thu, 05 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Tom Reedy, CC BY-SA 3.0. When the lumber and flour milling industries declined, Little Falls reinvented itself. The Larson Boat Company launched in the 1920s and drove the town's industrial identity for nearly a century. But the most remarkable thing about Little Falls may be its per-capita output of not...

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Image: Tom Reedy | CC BY-SA 3.0

Little Falls, Minnesota: Murals and Museums Along the Mississippi

Thu, 05 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Dustin Simmonds at English Wikipedia., CC BY 3.0. Little Falls packs its history into a walkable downtown on the east bank of the Mississippi. Two large murals by local artist Frank Gosiak on the facade of the old Hennepin Paper Company warehouse depict the logging era and Main Street in the early 1900s. A third Gosiak mural, Do...

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Image: Dustin Simmonds at English Wikipedia. | CC BY 3.0

Little Falls, Minnesota: Where the Ojibwe Sent Warriors

Thu, 05 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit McGhiever, CC BY-SA 3.0. Before the lumber barons and the aviators, this stretch of the Mississippi had a longer history. During the Dakota War of 1862, according to the obituary of Ojibwe war chief Mou-zoo-mau-nee, the people of Little Falls asked the Ojibwe for protection. The Ojibwe sent 150 warriors....

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Image: McGhiever | CC BY-SA 3.0