With roadwork finished along Highway 55, the route through North Minneapolis and Golden Valley still carries the name—and legacy—of Gov. Floyd B. Olson.
Minnesota’s fifth season, construction season, is reaching its zenith. But one major undertaking from last year’s construction season is now complete: the $7.2 million improvement project along Highway 55 between Thomas Avenue in Minneapolis and Highway 100 in Golden Valley.
The completion of the work allows the large number of motorists — and bicyclists, too — from the western suburbs and elsewhere who regularly or occasionally use that route to travel to and from their homes, businesses, recreational sites, and other destinations to breathe a sigh of relief.
The Minnesota Department of Transportation project included resurfacing Highway 55, accessibility and sidewalk improvements, repair of the BNSF railroad bridge near Theodore Wirth Regional Park, a redesigned left-turn lane at Dahlberg Drive, drainage work, an alternative Luce Line Trail route, and a new side path on the north side of the highway between Shaper Road and Theodore Wirth Parkway. MnDOT lists the project as completed after construction from July through November 2025.
That completed work should not be confused with MnDOT’s separate planning effort for Olson Memorial Highway east of Thomas Avenue, between Border Avenue/Oak Lake Avenue and the bridge west of Thomas Avenue. That project remains in preliminary design, with construction currently scheduled for 2029.
Corridor Completion
The corridor is one of Minnesota’s earliest urban highways. Its development was approved during the depths of the Great Depression in 1933, and the Minneapolis portion was completed in 1940 as part of Highway 55, which runs across the central portion of the state. Contemporary historical accounts describe the Minneapolis stretch as one of the state’s first “superhighways.”
Highway 55 also possesses an interesting history and a sobriquet recalling one of Minnesota’s most distinguished and doomed political figures, Gov. Floyd B. Olson.
Completion of the recent work provides an opportune occasion to look back at the law, lore, and legacy Olson left behind as the namesake of the route running through North Minneapolis and the western suburbs.
New Name
As the highway was being built, the Minnesota Legislature in 1937 designated Route 55 the Floyd B. Olson Memorial Highway, a designation that remains in state law today.
A popular governor, Olson headed the liberal Farmer-Labor Party, which later merged with Minnesota Democrats to create the modern-day DFL. Olson, known to some as “Skipper,” was elected governor in 1930 on a populist campaign, decisively re-elected in 1932, and elected to a third two-year term in 1934.
His tenure ended prematurely when he died of stomach cancer at age 44 in 1936. His death came while he was preparing a campaign for the U.S. Senate and amid speculation about an even larger national political future.
Of Scandinavian descent, with the distinctive middle name Bjørnstjerne, the future governor grew up on the North Side of Minneapolis and graduated from North High School. He attended the University of Minnesota for a year before eventually obtaining his law degree from Northwestern College of Law.
He thus remains one of North High’s many prominent alumni — along with some lesser ones, like this writer.
Prosecutor Propelled
Before his gubernatorial career, Olson was the Hennepin County attorney, a prosecutorial role that helped propel him into prominence and eventually placed him at the center of a landmark constitutional controversy.
The litigation, Near v. Minnesota, became one of the most significant freedom-of-the-press decisions in American law.
The case arose from a Minneapolis newspaper known as The Saturday Press, a scandal sheet that trafficked in vicious anti-Semitic and other bigoted attacks while also purporting to expose corruption involving elected officials, law enforcement personnel, and organized crime.
As Hennepin County attorney, Olson brought an action against the paper under Minnesota’s 1925 Public Nuisance Law, commonly called the “Gag Law,” which allowed courts to suppress publications deemed malicious, scandalous, and defamatory. Olson succeeded in shuttering the publication, and the Minnesota Supreme Court upheld the order.
But the U.S. Supreme Court reversed those rulings in 1931, during Olson’s first year as governor. In a 5-4 decision, the Court struck down the Minnesota law and established a landmark constitutional limitation on “prior restraint” of the press, holding that the First Amendment’s protection of press freedom applied against state government through the Fourteenth Amendment.
Four years after Olson’s death, a bronze statue of him was erected in 1940 in the median of Olson Memorial Highway near Penn Avenue. It was later moved to the south side of the roadway, where it remains. Another Olson statue was dedicated in 1958 on the grounds of the State Capitol in St. Paul.
Barren Businesses
Before and during the highway’s early years, the Sixth Avenue corridor through Near North Minneapolis was a bustling commercial area, replete with businesses, eateries, retail stores, and neighborhood institutions operated by a diverse assortment of proprietors, including members of the area’s Christian, Jewish, and Black communities.
At one time, they included a trio of furniture stores owned by this writer’s maternal grandfather.
But construction of Olson Memorial Highway itself displaced many homes and businesses during the late 1930s. Subsequent highway widening, changing demographics, and migration to the suburbs further transformed the corridor, leaving little of its former commercial landscape. Historical accounts describe the pre-highway Near North Side as a neighborhood filled with shops, restaurants, synagogues, churches, music venues, and other gathering places.
About the only remaining prominent edifice from that period is Sumner Library, a venerable building constructed in 1915 with funding from Scottish-born steel magnate and philanthropist Andrew Carnegie.
Carnegie and his philanthropic organizations ultimately provided some $56 million to construct 2,509 libraries worldwide, including 1,681 in the United States. Sumner remains one enduring local example of that extraordinary undertaking.
The Sumner branch sits near Heritage Park, the Phyllis Wheatley Community Center — long a haven for Minneapolis’ Black community — and the site of the former Sumner Field Homes, one of the city’s early low-cost public housing developments, later replaced by more modern housing.
The other structures of that earlier era along Highway 55 are largely gone. Olson’s statue remains, along with the memories and legacy of the man whose name and likeness still grace the highway running through North Minneapolis and the western suburbs.
For motorists moving along the newly resurfaced roadway, the construction may be over.
The history underneath it is not.
Fascinating history! Thanks to my old North High cohort, Marshall! I didn’t know about your family and the furniture stores. I didn’t know until recent years that my great-grandfather owned an entire square block on lower Plymouth Avenue with many businesses, including the grocery store that later came to be Greenstein’s grocery.
Thank you, Mr. Tanick, for this wonderful history on a piece of Minneapolis. I always love reading about the history of my city.
I always enjoy driving into and out of Minneapolis on Olson Memorial as you pass by Brownie Lake and Theodore Wirth Park. I’d love to see more flowers and native plantings along the roadway as it is a naturally scenic byway. Guess I have the time to do some of that myself!
It’s not possible to see Brownie Lake from Olson Memorial highway.