Explore the Neighborhoods within Central City
When two Benedictine priests arrived on the shores of Lake Windsor, they believed they brought religion to an unholy land. By establishing a small chapel that served as a schoolhouse with a modest but ever-expanding collection of books, they certainly brought culture. In the years following, the Benedictine community grew. The founding brothers had chosen a nice, quiet location, removed from the rapidly growing town to the south. Within thirty years, however, the city’s reach pushed on the ascetics a rival in the form of Chester Mercantile. Uptown has ever since existed in a state of dualism, spiritual isolation on one end and worldly commercialism on the other.
Commerce City bridges the industrial reality of The Docks to the working and middle-class neighborhoods of Woodland Park and St. Patrick’s. Originally named Eden Prairie, the mill and dock workers founded the village to distance themselves from the mining and military camps growing around Fort Meeker. Industry and manufacturing outgrew the docks and spread into the second Eden, bringing a less precipitous fall. When incorporated into Central City in 1906, the new charter labeled the area Commerce City. The neighborhood grew throughout the twentieth century, and the landscape of Commerce City fluctuated between residential neighborhoods that originated as ethnic pockets only to grow progressively more homogeneous. By the second half of the century, manufacturing houses, warehouses, and distribution centers obstructed the residential flow of working-class homes and neighborhood convenience centers.
Commerce City more than earned its name.
A quiet resort community sandwiched between The Heights and Lake Windsor, Long Beach began as a smattering of cabins on the wooded slope falling to the lake. Too far from the settlement’s center to accommodate commercial or industrial interests, for many years the area remained a place where locals went to hunt or fish and where a few residents who preferred solitude shied away from the growing city. In the 1890’s, the first resort was established, and a string of cabins grew around the resort for people seeking an escape. Throughout the following decades, the area grew in popularity and more resorts appeared. By the 1950’s, Long Beach had become a tourist destination for the entire tristate area. Although the area’s popularity declined with the city’s industry, Long Beach has experienced a revival in recent years.
In 1869, railroad workers established a tent city in what would become SOCCs. Clapboard houses gradually replaced the tents, and throughout the history of the city, SOCCs was the cheapest place to live. A land of leaky roofs, squatters, and barrelhouses, SOCCs housed the hardest living, and those who didn’t work, couldn’t work, or who worked the jobs no one else wanted.
For many years, Waite Park consisted of a few farms, fields, a gas station, grain elevator, and a post office between Uptown, the estates of The Heights, and the rural communities beyond the extended reach of the city. Included in the city limits when Central City annexed Jefferson Township, Waite Park was poised for growth. Developers jumped on the opportunity after the Second World War, and the heart of Waite Park became a center for entertainment during the fifties.
