Fact Sheet re Winona, Minnesota

WINONA, MINNESOTA TREMAN (alt. 664, pop. 20,850) Angyn "NATIONAL ARCHIVES AND THERAPY RECORDS Winona is the seat of Winona County. U.S. SERVICE" People: The city's dominant population element is of New England stock. Among the earlier settlers were Germans who came as early as 1856 in sufficient numbers to establish their own church, and to introduce Beethoven and Mozart to the prairie. Yankees and Germans together planted trees and built up fortunes in lumber, wheat, steamboating, and railroading, which at one time gave Winona the reputation of having more millionaires than any city of its size in the country. Among the foreign groups arriving since the middle of the nineteenth century, Poles predominated. They number (1938) about 3,500, live mostly in the east end of the city, and all are Americans of the second and third generation. Other nationalities have but minor representation. A large number of transient channel and dam workers and ice cutters drift through the city and are its only unassimilated element. The Leicht Press, now known as the National Weeklies, Inc. established by an early German settler, is one of the largest foreign language periodical syndicates in America; it publishes English, German and Polish newspapers, weeklies and monthlies, including the Lincoln Freie Presse, the American Farmer, and others. Industry: Winona's limestone came into relatively late recognition by architects, but today it is regarded as comparable to much of Italy's finest travertine. Side by side with the stone industry has grown the making of brick. The first brickyard was opened in 1870 and in 1920 the yearly output of the leading plant was 3,000,000 bricks. Every subsiding wave of industry left an aftermath of riches. When the decline of grain, lumber and steamboating threatened its continued development, the results of the new agriculture began to fill its coffers once again. Soon it was an important dairy and meat-packing center; then with the cabbages brought in by the farmers it made itself the largest sauerkraut producer west of Chicago; still later the second largest hay and clover seed market in the country, and with the farmers' straw it made insulating sheets. Today with many profitable industries, Winona claims to be the wealthiest city of its size in the Nation, and much of its $3,000,000 annual payroll still comes directly or indirectly from the farmers in the back country.