Ramsey County History – Winter 2000: “Transplants from Europe: Germans, Poles, Italians—Settlers on the Levee”

Transplants from Europe: Germans, Poles, Italians—Settlers on the Levee
Author: Greg Schach

The Upper Levee is a small piece of land near the Mississippi River, where steamboats landed in the nineteenth century and “transplants from Europe” were the early settlers. Immigrants from Germany, Ireland, and Poland were later joined by Italians. Most hoped to save money and return to their home villages such as Ripabottoni and Cascalenda in South Central Italy. The Italian community on the Upper Levee peaked at about 500 in the 1940s. When the Mississippi flooded extensively in 1952, it damaged many of the homes on the Upper Levee; consequently the City of St. Paul purchased most of the homes and land in the area, which it later converted to industrial use.

PDF of Schach article