Mill City Museum552

This newer museum was built within the limestone ruins of the century-old Washburn A Mill, one of the many mills that lined the Mississippi riverfront here, back when Minneapolis was the flour milling capital of the world. Back then, it produced enough flour to make 12,000,000 loaves of bread every day.

Museum exhibits explore the milling industry and how the city rose around it, and also highlight the lives of the millworkers, personalizing the history. Costumed interpreters regale visitors with detailed stories about the "old days," and changing displays explore other facets of life in the region.

Interactive exhibits include a Water Lab, where kids don aprons and direct the flow of water and goods down a mini-Mississippi. In the large and gleaming Baking Lab kitchen, it's Betty Crocker, not Martha Stewart, who reigns supreme; tasting opportunities are offered often. If samples of cookies aren't enough, there's a cafe on-site.

Mill City's five-star attraction - a kid-magnet that's also genuinely educational - is the eight-story Flour Tower. This innovative exhibit is viewed in a combination elevator/theatre, which takes seated guests up a shaft and through a tour of small, narrated vignettes at each floor. (One big boom and a brief fire scene might scare some kids under, say, age five, but most love it.) At the end, on the top floor, visitors see the milling equipment they just heard about, then enjoy a spectacular view on the way back down to the galleries, in a glass-walled elevator overlooking the river, falls, Stone Arch bridge, and mill ruins.

See the website for current information on camps and walking tours offered during summer months.