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Franklin Steele (c. 1813 – September 10, 1880) was an early settler of Minneapolis, Minnesota. Born in Chester County, Pennsylvania, of Scottish descent, Steele worked in the Lancaster, Pennsylvania, post office as a young man, where he once met President James Buchanan.
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- September 10, 1880 (aged 67), Minneapolis, Minnesota, U.S.
- 1813, Chester County, Pennsylvania, U.S.
Godfrey was recruited in 1847 by Franklin Steele—an early entrepreneur who staked claim to the east side of St. Anthony Falls—to supervise building the dam and sawmills.
Aug 22, 2014 · (A historical marker located in Minneapolis in Hennepin County, Minnesota.) A young Pennsylvanian won the race to grab land at the Falls of Saint Anthony after the area was opened to settlement in 1838.
Aug 22, 2014 · 1. The Falls That Built the City Marker. Inscription. Here at the Falls of St. Anthony, where waterpower, river transportation, and eventually railroads came together, the industrial heart of the upper Midwest began to beat in the mid-1800s. Keen-eyed factory and mill owners from the states of the Northeast saw in the falls a "Niagara of the West."
Franklin Steele was Fort Snelling's sutler, and made a fortune by staking claim to the eastern side of St. Anthony's Falls and building sawmills and a toll-bridge on the site of what would soon be Minneapolis.
St. Anthony Falls is the only major falls on the upper Mississippi River. Historically, its visitors and commentators comprise a who’s who of European and American exploration: Father Louis Hennepin, Jonathan Carver, and Zebulon Pike, to name a few.
Beginning with Franklin Steele’s mill that opened in 1848, sawmilling quickly became the first large-scale industrial activity at the falls. By 1869, sixteen sawmills lined both sides of the falls and sawed nearly 91 million board feet of lumber annually.
