1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/St Peter

ST PETER, a city and the county-seat of Nicollet county, Minnesota, U.S.A., on the Minnesota river, about 75 m. S.W. of Minneapolis. Pop. (1905, state census) 4514 (875 foreign-born); (1910) 4176. It is served by the Chicago & North-Western railway and by steamboat lines on the Minnesota river, which is navigable for light draft steamboats to this point. The neighbouring lakes with their excellent fishing attract many summer visitors. The city has a Carnegie library, and is the seat of the Minnesota Hospital for the Insane (1866), and of Gustavus Adolphus College (Swedish Evangelical Lutheran; co-educational), which was founded in 1862 and has a college, an Academy and School of Pedagogy, a School of Commerce and a School of Music. St Peter is an important market for lumber and grain; it has stone quarries and various manufactures. Settled about 1852, St Peter was incorporated as a village in 1865, and was chartered as a city in 1891. In 1857 the legislature, a short time before its adjournment for the session, passed a bill to remove the capital of Minnesota to St Peter, but the bill was not presented to the governor for his signature within the prescribed time, and when the legislature re-convened a similar bill could not be passed.