Preserved Farm Silo in Jonathan, Carver County, Minnesota, 1972
On October, 8, 1970, the federal government began issuing bonds to finance the development of an entirely new community—Jonathan, near Chaska, Minnesota. Jonathan was the vision of businessman, conservationist, and former state senator Henry T. McKnight. McKnight believed that by incorporating concepts such as ecological balance, community cohesion, and technological innovation, Jonathan could serve as a model for sustainable suburban development. Privately-financed construction began in the late 1960s. In 1970, the federal Housing and Urban Development (HUD) agency approved millions of dollars in loan guarantees to fund additional land purchases and infrastructure development. After a promising start, the project collapsed. McKnight died two months after the first bonds were issued, creating a gaping leadership void. Home sales tanked as a nationwide economic downturn took hold. By the mid 1970s, Jonathan was broke and construction had halted. HUD foreclosed on the town in 1978. Jonathan is now just another neighborhood in Chaska. Intrigued? My co-author Thomas Saylor has written a fascinating account of Jonathan for the latest edition of Minnesota History Quarterly. I highly recommend it.
Fitger Brewing Company, Duluth, 1972
Duluth’s 115-year-old Fitger Brewing Company brewed its last bottle of beer on September 30, 1972. Fitger’s, unlike many failed breweries of the 1970s, succumbed to a unique combination of government-initiated pressures. Its problems began when it agreed with the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (PCA) to install new and expensive environmentally-friendly equipment, or, failing that, to cease operations. Then the Minnesota Department of Highways announced tentative plans to demolish the Fitger’s complex to make way for an extension of Interstate-35. The company’s owners decided that it made no sense to invest in the new equipment the PCA was demanding if the brewery faced likely extinction. As a result, Fitger’s joined the growing line-up of once-popular beers that vanished during the 70s and 80s. The Fitger’s complex re-opened in 1984 as a multipurpose entertainment and retail center. By that time, the original plans for the I-35 extension had changed to protect many threatened lakefront properties, including the old brewery.
Photo via Duluth News Tribune
Phyllis Kahn Celebrates Her Election Night Victory, 1972 (by Charles Bjorgen)
The election of 1972 was a political breakthrough for women in Minnesota. Six women were elected to the Minnesota House of Representatives that year, five for the first time. While those six women—DFLers Phyllis Kahn, Joan Growe, Helen McMillan, and Linda Berglin and Republicans Ernee McArthur and Mary Forsythe—still represented a small legislative minority, they blazed a path that others would follow. (This and other rarely-seen photos appear in our forthcoming history, Minnesota in the 70s, which hits the bookshelves in November.)
Photo via Minnesota Historical Society
Virginia Piper and Harry Piper, Post-Kidnapping, 1972
Virginia Piper, the wife of retired investment banker Harry C. Piper, was kidnapped from the couple’s home in Orono, Minnesota, on July 27, 1972. Her kidnappers released her two days later after her husband paid a one million dollar ransom—at the time, the largest ransom in U.S. history. The two men charged with the kidnapping were eventually acquitted. The crime remains unsolved. Only $4,000 of the ransom money was ever recovered.
Photo via Business Insider