Posts Tagged With: Winona

Reads Landing, Minnesota

Since tomorrow is supposed to be cold and rainy, we made today one of taking advantage of warm, partly cloudy weather to run to various museums and stores that were on our list.

The morning started out watching the bald eagles over the river; observing a US Army Corps of Engineers boat that was recording depth levels on the Mississippi River and in frontof our b and b;, and finally watching two maintenance workers for the Canadian Pacific Kansas City Southern Railroad that had utilized a creosote soaked rope to burn alongside the railroad tracks. We were informed that this process was done to heat up the bolts that are used to connect the railroad tracks and the ties. It was an unusual sight, to say the least.

Chris wished to return to a thrift store in Winona that she and Kathy have been to previously. We left after our morning scones at eight and breakfast at nine at the B&B. Excellent food to fuel our day.

Unfortunately, though, the thrift store is located in a strip mall that has been purchased, and the store has been forced to relocate. We arrived on a day in which they were closed in order to pack merchandise to move to their new location. Activity one foiled.

Activity number two was a visit to the La Crosse Wisconsin Heritage Center. I had read that they had a display on the Ho Chunk Indians, which I wanted to research for use on the Empire Builder Trails And Rails program.

The material on display in their exhibits, for the Ho Chunk and other topics, was basic and minimal. I obtained a few comments that I can use in the presentation, but nothing dramatic.

On the way there, we stopped at the Wisconsin visitor information center. I picked up some Wisconsin maps to use also on the Trails And Rails program. We also scoured their literature racks for information relating to Madison, Wisconsin, which we hope to visit in a few weeks.

All in all, actively number two was just so so.

Since we were finding ourselves with extra time, we backtracked to the Winona County History Museum. In our previous trips to Winona, we have seen numerous specialty museums, but not the basic county one. We were impressed by its scale and scope. The building is about 20 years old and the exhibits were worthwhile to visit. Winona is a center for stained glass artists as evidenced by the one example shown above. There are numerous stained glass windows on display in both commercial and non-commercial buildings.

Winona is an example of a very prosperous town from the late 1800s and which while suffering during the depression era, has managed to maintain an economic and cultural vitality. The volunteer at the history Museum informed us that the Minnesota Marine art Museum, which we have been to before, had a new display about a magnificent panorama.

Panorama’s are not well known today but in the middle to late 1800s they were a cultural phenomenon that thrilled, titillated, and educated the populous. Panoramas are normally 8 to 10 feet tall and 300 to 1500 feet long. They are stored on cylindrical rollers and unwrapped a section at a time. Chris and I had visited the St. Louis Art Museum in January 2024 in order to see the “Panorama of the Monumental Grandeur of the Mississippi Valley”. Unfortunately, it was Just moved back into storage when we were there. It was the only remaining example of those panoramas which were used to illustrate the Mississippi River to Americans outside the territory along the Mississippi. I had not been aware there were panoramas of other topics still in museums in the US.

The panorama we saw today was 1275 feet long and depicted an around the world trip of a whaling vessel. It was on loan from the New Bedford Museum. At the Minnesota Marine Art Museum, every 11 days they will advance the panorama 40 feet to show a new scene.

Activities three and four were well worth the time. We finished the afternoon with a fish and chips dinner at a restaurant overlooking the river in Winona. 

Ed and Chris

March 28,2025