While walking along the top of Sharp Mountain in 1791, Philip Ginder kicked up a piece of black stone that turned out to be anthracite coal. This discovery paved the way for a million-dollar coal industry that thrived for more than a century and spawned the birth of Summit Hill. In early 1827, a nine-mile stretch of the Switchback Gravity Railroad was built for the purpose of hauling coal from Summit Hill to the Lehigh River in Mauch Chunk. By the end of the century, the Switchback was the number two tourist attraction in America, second only to Niagara Falls. Many of the early buildings are no longer standing, but thanks to postcards and photographers of the time, many images of Summit Hill's lost places have been preserved.

This winner of 11 national publishing awards belongs on every coffee table Summit Avenue, grande dame of Victorian boulevards, is lined with magnificent turn-of-the-century mansions built by railroad magnates, lumber barons and captains of industry. Great Houses of Summit Avenue and the Hill District is a celebration of these homes on St. Paul's best-known and most beloved avenue. With a foreword by Garrison Keillor and fascinating stories penned by four award-winning writers, the book opens the doors to more than two dozen legendary homes situated on America's best-preserved avenue from the era. Photographer Karen Melvin takes us along for a tour through stately mansions to view these remarkable architectural gems. Richly illustrated with hundreds of photos, this book offers an irresistible invitation to step through the doors of these showcase homes to explain what we are all curious to know.

Well known as the most prestigious and beautiful street in the Twin Cities, Summit Avenue runs past the opulent mansion of railroad tycoon James J. Hill, an early home of F. Scott Fitzgerald, and several residences designed by renowned architect Cass Gilbert. In its heyday the four-and-one-half-mile-long boulevard included 13 churches, 9 schools, and 440 residences, 373 of which survive. St. Paul's Historic Summit Avenue highlights the fascinating story of this boulevard, from its pre-Civil War origins, when the area was still considered wilderness, to its fashionable height at the turn of the century. Ernest R. Sandeen discusses the preservation of Summit Avenue and takes readers on a walking tour of the first and grandest mile of the street, beginning with the Cathedral of St. Paul. A second walking tour gives the reader Fitzgerald's Summit Avenue, including excerpts from his notebooks and stories describing the area. The book concludes with an index of Summit Avenue houses built through the 1970s. Before his death in 1982, Ernest R. Sandeen was the James Wallace Professor of History and codirector of the Living Historical Museum at Macalester College. He served as a member of St. Paul's Historic Preservation Commission and as a partner in Lanegran, Richter, and Sandeen, an architectural preservation, design, and land-use firm.

Thoroughly researched and meticulously written, this guidebook features more than 250 architectural wonders of wide-ranging styles in one of the loveliest neighborhoods in the Twin Cities.

"These reports are made up of the reports of the director, geologist, paleontologist, botanist and entomologist, and museum Bulletins and Memoirs, issued as advance sections of the reports." N.Y. State Museum. Bulletin 66, p. 241.