Though abundant and accessible water certainly benefited the population of Minneapolis, it also set up some fundamental problems. An interconnected infrastructure drawing from a mixed-use water source inadvertently created a new vector of disease…

Minneapolis’ population and size continued to expand throughout the 1880s. Typhoid outbreaks maintained a positive correlation with the population and size of the city. Baffled city officials searched for a source to blame and settled on the…

Over the next several decades, the exact cause of typhoid remained elusive and contested. As late as 1910, the Minnesota Board of Health insisted that drinking water was not the primary cause of typhoid. Instead, Minneapolis officials attributed the…