Prairie Lightning: The Rise and Fall of William Drew Washburn

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.