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Red Wing Self-guided History Tours

Greg Taylor



Red Wing Downtown Mainstreet is offering a new "history tour" program that community members can enjoy.


The self-guided tours include 10 buildings.


Downtown Mainstreet has collaborated with the Goodhue County Historical Society and unearthed some great stories:


Boxrud Brothers Block, currently Hallstrom’s Florist, three immigrant brothers. Anton, Christian, and Richard Boxrud arrived in the US from Norway in 1864 during the midst of the American Civil War.


Anton was the first to enter the dry goods business, selling things like textiles and kitchen staples, becoming one dry goods merchant of the northeast. Christian became the first president of the Aurora Ski Club, which is credited with introducing ski jumping to the country, and hosted two National Ski Tournaments in town.


St. James Hotel, built in 1875, offered high-end lodging accommodations that accompanied it, were overseen by brothers Ed and Fred Blood, who were lauded around town. When President Rutherford B. Hayes spoke in Red Wing in 1878, he dined at the St. James and was served, according to The Republican, “Blood’s best.”


You can also tour the Chicago, Milwaukee, and St. Paul Railroad Depot. For the half-century following the depot’s construction, the railroad was still the most popular means of long-distance travel in the United States. Many famous visitors would have stopped through Red Wing on these routes, including President Harry Truman, who made it one of the 352 stops on his 1948 “Whistle Stop Tour.”


Other self-guided tours offered include, Pirius Bakery, Iron Works, Webster Livery Stable, T.B. Sheldon Memorial Auditorium and Gladstone Block.


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