West Saint Paul
Near Minneapolis St Paul, Minnesota
Welcome to West Saint Paul, a Dakota County suburb with a tangled past hidden behind its simple name. It sits on the west bank of the Mississippi, across the river from downtown Saint Paul, and that is exactly where the name comes from.
A community called West Saint Paul dates to eighteen fifty-eight, the same year Minnesota became a state. A separate West Saint Paul existed in Dakota County from eighteen seventy-four until eighteen eighty-seven, when it was folded into the new city of South Saint Paul.
Then in eighteen eighty-nine, residents split off again and reclaimed the original name. So this is, in a sense, a second West Saint Paul, a place that has been born, dissolved, and reborn.
