The Falls of St. Anthony

Among all the artists who rushed to document the largely unsettled land west of the Mississippi River, Seth Eastman is the best-known interpreter of Minnesota Territory. Eastman had been trained in drawing at West Point military academy. He first came to Fort Snelling in 1829 and returned in 1841 as a commissioned officer for a seven-year stay. The Falls of St. Anthony shows the falls and adjacent riverbanks nearly untouched by the commercial development that would come with Euro-American settlement. The only hint, in the middle distance, is the first dam built above the falls (in 1848), between the east bank of the Mississippi and Nicollet Island.