In every way, William Drew Washburn was larger than life. Although born
one of ten children on a remote, hardscrabble farm in western Maine,
fifty years later he was entertaining Presidents in his eighty-room
mansion in Minneapolis, Minnesota. William Drew Washburn was at the
center of some of the largest enterprises in mid-western history, but he
is little-known today. Perhaps this is because, although a loyal
supporter of his church and his family for more than sixty years, he was
also at the center of one of the biggest corporate shipwrecks in
Minnesota's history. A leading entrepreneur and politician of early
Minneapolis, Washburn was deeply involved in most of the key
developments of the early city. This included the development of the
Minneapolis Mill Co., early lumber and flour milling at both Minneapolis
and Anoka, trolley cars, newspapers, electricity, railroads and coal
mining, among other things. Also covered are Wasburn's life at home, his
six successful children, many major civic projects he instigated, the
births of the Minneapolis and St. Louis Railroad, the Soo Line Railroad,
and the wreck of the Pillsbury-Washburn Flour Co. Ltd. Weaving together
occasional stormy relationships with brother C.C. Washburn, James J.
Hill, politicians Ignatius Donnelly and Knute Nelson, and three
generations of Pillsburys, Prairie Lightning truly captures Washburn's
colorful history.
