Don Hofsommer presents Minneapolis from the 1860s into the 1950s, when railroads served as a unique link between city and countryside. Rails carried wheat and helped make Minneapolis the flour milling capital of the world; brought logs to Minneapolis to be processed into lumber that built towns and farms across the prairies; and delivered coal and all manner of manufactured goods and merchandise to Minneapolis, its vast hinterland to the north and west, and beyond to the Rockies and the Pacific, making the growth of America's northern heartland possible.