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Minneapolis
The larger of the Twin Cities, on the Mississippi
Minneapolis sits on the Mississippi River at the Falls of St. Anthony, the only major waterfall on the entire river and the reason the city exists. The falls' waterpower drove the sawmills and flour mills that made Minneapolis the flour-milling capital of the world in the late 1800s — the city's name fuses the Dakota word for water with the Greek for city. Paired with Saint Paul across the river, it is the larger and more commercial of the Twin Cities.
Glaciers left the region freckled with lakes — Minneapolis has more than a dozen within its limits, ringed by parks — and the Mississippi runs through the heart of downtown over its falls. The surrounding country is the gently rolling lake-and-prairie land of southern Minnesota. The two cities share a metro of more than three and a half million, the largest in the Upper Midwest.