New book reveals Rochester’s hidden history

While the stories of Rochester and Mayo Clinic will forever be intertwined, author Virginia Wright-Peterson wants you to know that there is more to the city’s history. 

In her latest book, Rochester: An Urban Biography, Wright-Peterson carefully documents the city’s past, from the presence of indigenous people all the way to the rise of Destination Medical Center. In between the bookends are the lesser-known stories of the people and events — the good and the ugly — that are often overlooked in the telling of the city’s history.

"This happens in a lot of different venues and spaces. There is one story that is very powerful and very much worth celebrating, but then it tends to become the story and it ends up masking a lot of other narratives that are important for us to know and realize,” says Wright-Peterson, who is the author of two other books, Women of Mayo Clinic and A Woman's War, Too: Women at Work During World War II.

Take the old Conley Camera Company site (now home to Bleu Duck and Google); did you know the building was used during World War II to produce the first fully-automated, guided missile used in combat? 

Or that Rochester is indirectly named after a slave owner? 

Or that there are hundreds of unmarked graves in Oakwood Cemetery? 

To Wright-Peterson, these are just some of the stories that have been buried for far too long — and that she hopes by being told will help better connect readers with the city’s past.

"I walked past that open section all of the time and I never wondered what was there,” Wright-Peterson said of the cemetery. “And that was kind of a wake-up call, to start to wonder — when something seems to be missing, what happened? What's the story?”

Among the themes Wright-Peterson does not shy away from is the city’s troubling history on race. She examines the city’s anti-Native sentiment that existed in the time of the U.S.-Dakota War of 1862 when Rochester sent militia groups to push Natives out of the area. She also writes about how unwelcoming the city was toward people of color throughout much of the 20th Century, including the use of racial covenants, the presence of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s, and the burning of a cross outside a hotel that catered to Blacks amid civil rights protests in 1963.

"It's amazing to go back to the '20s when the KKK was openly in the parade and spoke, and placed their publications on people's doorsteps — almost every doorstep in Rochester in 1923,” says Wright-Peterson.

Yet, weaved in with sobering stories about the city’s shortcomings, Wright-Peterson finds room to explore some of the complexities of its history — from the rise and fall of IBM and its impacts on the city’s economy and attitudes toward diversity; to the role of women in politics; to anecdotes of local pioneers like William O’Shields, a Black student who in 1918 was named captain of the Rochester High School football team.

"I lived here all my life and I thought writing this book would be pretty easy, but then I started finding all of these stories that were just complete surprises to me — and relevant to our current identity,” says Wright-Peterson.

Rochester: Urban History is part of a series from the Minnesota Historical Society Press. Copies are available for purchase online, at the History Center, or at Garden Party Books. She is also scheduled to host a book talk and signing at Garden Party on Sept. 23 at 7 p.m.

Sean Baker is a Rochester journalist and the founder of Med City Beat.

Cover photo: West side of Broadway between First and Second Streets, ca. 1970-75 / History Center of Olmsted County