Around Swedish America in 548 Days - Day 45

Day 45 - Little Falls

Charles Lindbergh is probably the most famous Minnesotan through the times and in Little Falls you can visit the Charles A. Lindbergh House.

After finishing his training in the United States Army Corps, the 25-year-old Lindbergh took on the job of pilot on a plane carrying mail between Chicago and St. Louis. At this time a $ 35 000 prize was offered to anyone who could make the first non-stop flight between New York and Paris. Lindbergh was the outsider with his Spirit of St. Louis but he won the race, crossing the Atlantic in 33 hours. There were 4 million people to receive him when he returned by boat to New York. "A more modest bearing, a more unaffected presence, a manlier, kinder, simpler character no idol of the multitude ever displayed. Never was America prouder of a son" and never had the Swedes of North America got a bigger boost.

Charles A. Lindbergh House — 1200 S. Lindbergh Drive (320-616-5421).

The house built by Charles Lindbergh Sr. sits near the banks of the Mississippi River on more than one hundred acres of land bought in 1898. It replaced his three-story, thirteen-room house lost in a fire in 1905. Though simpler in style than the first, the present house rests on the same foundations. Used primarily as a summer home, it was where Charles Lindbergh Jr. spent his boyhood summers. After 1924, the Lindbergh family rarely used the house, and in 1931 it was donated to the state of Minnesota, which designated the site a state park. The Minnesota

Historical Society has restored the house and constructed a visitor center to tell the story of the younger Lindbergh's life.

Dedicated in 1973, the visitor center was completely remodeled in 2002 on the occasion of Charles Lindbergh Jr.'s centennial and the 75th anniversary of his epochal flight to Paris in 1927. New exhibits cover the famous aviator's entire life, from his boyhood in Little Falls to his death in Hawaii in 1974, at the age of 72, A film on Lindbergh's life is shown in a ground floor auditorium, and the visitor center also includes a gift shop.

Ola Månsson (1808—1893), grandfather of Charles Lindbergh Jr., had a farm near Simrishamn, Skåne. He also was a member of the Riksdag before he emigrated from Sweden in 1860. The family homesteaded near Meirose, Minnesota, and Månsson began identifying himself as August Lindbergh, the surname having been previously adopted by a brother in Sweden. Månsson's son, Charles August Lindbergh (1858—1924), attended the University of Michigan Law School and practiced law in Little Falls. He was a Republican member of the U.S. Congress from 1907 to 1917 and was nominated for governor of Minnesota on the Farmer-Labor ticket in 1924, but he died during the campaign. He requested that no grave marker be erected in his memory.

Charles A. Lindbergh Jr. (1902—1974) attended high school in Little Falls, graduating in 1918. He spent two years running his father's farm and then went on to the University of Wisconsin to study civil engineering. Dropping out during his sophomore year, he entered a flying school in Lincoln, Nebraska. As a pilot for an airmail line, Lindbergh decided to try for the $25,000 Orteig Prize for the first nonstop New York—Paris flight. Financed by a group of St. Louis businessmen, Lindbergh helped design the plane, the Spirit of St. Louis, used in his historic transatlantic flight on May 20—21, 1927.

The Charles A. Lindbergh State Park off County Road 52, in memory of Charles Lindbergh Jr.'s father, is on the National Register of Historic Places. Members of the Lindbergh family donated the land.