Page:History of Goodhue County, Minnesota.djvu/741

 CHAPTEB KXXIII. MODERN RED WING. Its Advantages, Opportunities and Wealth — Some of the Things Which Have Made It Famous— History of the Various News- papers Which Have Been Published Here — Associations and Societies — Miscellaneous. Red Wing is "beautiful for situation." Recently one of its citizens journeying in the Easl me1 a cultured gentleman who has held importanl positions under the government and traveled ex- tensively. When ii was announced to him where his friend hailed from, he quickly replied, "'Red Wing? Oh, yes— it's thai very beautiful little city nestled among the blurt's, lying along the Mississippi river below St. Paul. Twenty years ago I stopped off there and climbed the grand old bluff and go1 one of the must picturesque views of my life. How very fortunate you are to live in such a place !" This expression from the man of affairs finds an echo in tin hearts and minds of all who, as residents or strangers, have had the opportunity of standing on Barn bluff, which, like a sentinel, rises three hundred feet above the city. From its heights there stretches out a panorama of surpassing loveliness. At its base lies the city, its homes clustered here and there amid lesser bluffs, covered during the summer months with greenest verdure, while along the river front are to be seen the manufacturing industries which are the backbone of the city's prosperity. Red Wing is not merely picturesque. The beauty with which heaven so richly endowed it would always give it a unique favor among the peculiarly attractive places to be found on Mother Earth, but, happily, its natural charms have been supplemented and augmented by a progressive population, possessed of a rare sense of the value of civic improvement and keenly alive to all that enhances the moral, intellectual and artistic as well as the material growth of the city. Among the smaller cities of the United States, it has attracted. by its splendid civic altitude and unusual natural beauty, wide attention and been the subject of numerous magazine articles and much newspaper comment, appreciative and admiring. 645