The Saint Paul Southern Electric: Minnesota's River Railway

Before the automobile dominated Minnesota's roads, an electric railway carried passengers along the Mississippi River between Saint Paul and Hastings. The Saint Paul Southern began passenger service in the early nineteen hundreds, running an excursion through river bluffs and farmland. It was part of a nationwide interurban boom, when electric railways briefly connected American cities and towns in the years between the steam railroad and the automobile age.

Passengers could step off in river towns, spend an afternoon, and catch the next car home. The line passed near this point, threading through the Mississippi corridor that has served as a travel route since the Dakota people first mapped it. Interurbans like the Saint Paul Southern faded quickly once car ownership spread in the nineteen twenties.

By the Depression most were gone, leaving only the roads and the occasional marker.