Afton, Minnesota
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Afton, Minnesota
Afton is a city in Washington County, Minnesota, United States. The population was 2,886 at the 2010 United States Census. It lies on a small bay where Valley Creek empties into the St. Croix River, several miles north of its confluence with the Mississippi River. Afton is well known for Afton Alps, the largest ski and snowboard area in the Twin Cities metropolitan area. It is home to Afton State Park on the St. Croix River. Due to these two destinations and its quaint small-town appearance in a major metropolitan area, Afton receives a fair amount of local tourism in the form of day trips. The 2018 US Winter Olympic Gold Medalist cross-country skier Jessie Diggins is from Afton. History The first settlers in the area arrived in 1837. The settlement of Afton was platted in 1855, with the name chosen from a poem (Sweet Afton) by Robert Burns. A post office has been in operation at Afton since 1857. The city contains three properties listed on the National Register of Historic ...
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City
A city is a human settlement of notable size.Goodall, B. (1987) ''The Penguin Dictionary of Human Geography''. London: Penguin.Kuper, A. and Kuper, J., eds (1996) ''The Social Science Encyclopedia''. 2nd edition. London: Routledge. It can be defined as a permanent and densely settled place with administratively defined boundaries whose members work primarily on non-agricultural tasks. Cities generally have extensive systems for housing, transportation, sanitation, utilities, land use, production of goods, and communication. Their density facilitates interaction between people, government organisations and businesses, sometimes benefiting different parties in the process, such as improving efficiency of goods and service distribution. Historically, city-dwellers have been a small proportion of humanity overall, but following two centuries of unprecedented and rapid urbanization, more than half of the world population now lives in cities, which has had profound consequences for g ...
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Democratic Party (United States)
The Democratic Party is one of the two major contemporary political parties in the United States. Founded in 1828, it was predominantly built by Martin Van Buren, who assembled a wide cadre of politicians in every state behind war hero Andrew Jackson, making it the world's oldest active political party.M. Philip Lucas, "Martin Van Buren as Party Leader and at Andrew Jackson's Right Hand." in ''A Companion to the Antebellum Presidents 1837–1861'' (2014): 107–129."The Democratic Party, founded in 1828, is the world's oldest political party" states Its main political rival has been the Republican Party since the 1850s. The party is a big tent, and though it is often described as liberal, it is less ideologically uniform than the Republican Party (with major individuals within it frequently holding widely different political views) due to the broader list of unique voting blocs that compose it. The historical predecessor of the Democratic Party is considered to be th ...
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Republican Party (United States)
The Republican Party, also referred to as the GOP ("Grand Old Party"), is one of the two major contemporary political parties in the United States. The GOP was founded in 1854 by anti-slavery activists who opposed the Kansas–Nebraska Act, which allowed for the potential expansion of chattel slavery into the western territories. Since Ronald Reagan's presidency in the 1980s, conservatism has been the dominant ideology of the GOP. It has been the main political rival of the Democratic Party since the mid-1850s. The Republican Party's intellectual predecessor is considered to be Northern members of the Whig Party, with Republican presidents Abraham Lincoln, Rutherford B. Hayes, Chester A. Arthur, and Benjamin Harrison all being Whigs before switching to the party, from which they were elected. The collapse of the Whigs, which had previously been one of the two major parties in the country, strengthened the party's electoral success. Upon its founding, it supported c ...
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Minnesota State Highway 95
Minnesota State Highway 95 (MN 95) is a highway in east-central Minnesota, which runs from its Intersection (road), intersection with Minnesota State Highway 23, State Highway 23 near St. Cloud, Minnesota, St. Cloud and continues east and south to its southern terminus at its intersection with U.S. Highways U.S. Route 61 in Minnesota, 61 / U.S. Route 10 in Minnesota, 10 (Concurrency (road), co-signed) at Cottage Grove, Minnesota, Cottage Grove. This highway has two distinct segments (East/West section and a North/South section) that meet at Taylors Falls, Minnesota, Taylors Falls. MN 95 passes through the cities of Princeton, Minnesota, Princeton, Cambridge, Minnesota, Cambridge, North Branch, Minnesota, North Branch, Taylors Falls, Minnesota, Taylors Falls, Stillwater, Minnesota, Stillwater, and Lakeland, Minnesota, Lakeland. Route description State Highway 95 has a somewhat unusual routing, starting with a west-to-east section between St. Cloud, Minnesota, St. Cloud and Taylo ...
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Cushing Hotel
The Cushing Hotel is a historic hotel in Afton, Minnesota, United States, established in 1867 to cater to railroad workers, lumbermen, and travelers. The hotel was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1985 for having local significance in the theme of commerce. It was nominated for exemplifying the commercial lodging common to mid-19th-century river towns. It remains in business as the Afton House Inn. Description The original section of the Cushing Hotel is a simple two-story wood-frame building. It measures and is topped with a hip roof. The building was constructed of locally milled white pine and sheathed in clapboard. Decoration is very minimal, primarily consisting of thin lintels over some doors and windows. The building has been expanded and altered over the years. Early on a two-story wing was added to the rear to create additional rooms. Around 1907 a screened porch was added across the front façade. Later the south façade gained a brick ch ...
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Newington Gilbert House
The Newington Gilbert House is a historic house in Afton, Minnesota, United States. It was built in 1864 in what was then the separate community of Valley Creek. The house was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1982 for its local significance in the themes of architecture and exploration/settlement. As one of the original houses in Valley Creek, it was nominated for helping to depict one of the many small Washington County settlements that formed around a commercial venture—though one that never progressed to formal platting—and the community's two-decade preference for Greek Revival architecture. Valley Creek was later formally incorporated into Afton. Description The Newington Gilbert House is a two-story wood-frame building. The original section has a simple rectangular floorplan. Patterned on ancient Greek temples, it sports as decoration full-height pilasters at the front corners, a wide entablature, and gable returns forming a broken pedimen ...
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Erastus Bolles House
The Erastus Bolles House is a historic house in Afton, Minnesota, United States. It was built in 1856 in what was then the separate community of Valley Creek. The house was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1982 for its local significance in the themes of architecture and exploration/settlement. As one of the original houses in Valley Creek, it was nominated for helping to depict one of the many small Washington County settlements that formed around a commercial venture—though one that never progressed to formal platting—and the community's two-decade preference for Greek Revival architecture. Valley Creek was later formally incorporated into Afton. Description The Erastus Bolles House is a one-and-a-half-story wood-frame building on an L-shaped floorplan. Its design is extremely simple. The low-pitch gables lack the pediment returns of high Greek Revival, but the style is manifest in the overall massing, the six-pane double-sash windows with stra ...
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National Register Of Historic Places
The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic value". A property listed in the National Register, or located within a National Register Historic District, may qualify for tax incentives derived from the total value of expenses incurred in preserving the property. The passage of the National Historic Preservation Act (NHPA) in 1966 established the National Register and the process for adding properties to it. Of the more than one and a half million properties on the National Register, 95,000 are listed individually. The remainder are contributing resources within historic districts. For most of its history, the National Register has been administered by the National Park Service (NPS), an agency within the U.S. Department of the Interior. Its goals are to help property owners and inte ...
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Robert Burns
Robert Burns (25 January 175921 July 1796), also known familiarly as Rabbie Burns, was a Scottish poet and lyricist. He is widely regarded as the national poet of Scotland and is celebrated worldwide. He is the best known of the poets who have written in the Scots language, although much of his writing is in a "light Scots dialect" of English, accessible to an audience beyond Scotland. He also wrote in standard English, and in these writings his political or civil commentary is often at its bluntest. He is regarded as a pioneer of the Romantic movement, and after his death he became a great source of inspiration to the founders of both liberalism and socialism, and a cultural icon in Scotland and among the Scottish diaspora around the world. Celebration of his life and work became almost a national charismatic cult during the 19th and 20th centuries, and his influence has long been strong on Scottish literature. In 2009 he was chosen as the greatest Scot by the Scottish pub ...
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Sweet Afton
"Sweet Afton" is a lyrical poem describing the Afton Water in Ayrshire, Scotland. It was written by Robert Burns in 1791 and set to music by Jonathan E. Spilman in 1837, under the title ''Flow gently, sweet Afton''. This poem was originally published by Burns in the Scots Musical Museum as a song, still sung today as published (see external links below). "Sweet Afton" contains a number of monosyllables, which contribute to a gentle, soothing rhythm. It can be seen as a hymn for peace. The poem is in the metre 11 - 11 - 11- 11. The University of South Carolina uses this song as the melody for their alma mater, " We Hail Thee Carolina". The song is sung by Mary Bennett (played by Marsha Hunt) in the 1940 version of ''Pride and Prejudice''. It is also mentioned in Chapter IX of MacKinlay Kantor's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel ''Andersonville'' (1955). In the Andy Griffith Show episode “Mayberry Goes Hollywood” (1961) a citizen of Mayberry sings “Sweet Afton” to serenade ...
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Plat
In the United States, a plat ( or ) (plan) is a cadastral map, drawn to scale, showing the divisions of a piece of land. United States General Land Office surveyors drafted township plats of Public Lands Surveys to show the distance and bearing between section corners, sometimes including topographic or vegetation information. City, town or village plats show subdivisions broken into blocks with streets and alleys. Further refinement often splits blocks into individual lots, usually for the purpose of selling the described lots; this has become known as subdivision. After the filing of a plat, legal descriptions can refer to block and lot-numbers rather than portions of sections. In order for plats to become legally valid, a local governing body, such as a public works department, urban planning commission, or zoning board must normally review and approve them. In gardening history, in both varieties of English (and in French etc), a "plat" means a section of a formal par ...
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