Welcome back to The Flyover, your daily digest of important, overlooked, and/or interesting Minnesota news stories.
Check Out This Very Cool Falls Redesign
If you've ever thought that the St. Anthony Falls Upper Lock area is a little too concrete/barren/sad for such a potentially cool part of the Mississippi, well, the folks at Owámniyomni Okhódayapi agree with you. "The Upper Lock is a concrete monolith—a monument to industrialization—that has obstructed the Falls for over 60 years and devastated our connection to the River," the Dakota-led nonprofit writes on its website.
But not for much longer! Owámniyomni Okhódayapi has put almost a decade of work into deigning a culturally and environmentally restored vision for the area, which will revive more than five acres of land, water, and bluff conditions along the riverfront. You can see their plans for the site, revealed earlier this week, in the rendering up top, as well as here:
And here:
I mean, hell yeah, right? The "land transformation" portion of the project is scheduled to begin in 2026, which is also when the parcel is supposed to be conveyed from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to Owámniyomni Okhódayapi, with the "water transformation" portion taking place after.
Measles, You-sles, We-all-sles
For the Minnesota Star Tribune, Yuqing Liu reports on the frankly horrifying fact that our state now has one of the lowest kindergarten measles vaccination rates in the country. Minnesota has experienced the fourth-biggest drop in vaccination rates compared with its pre-pandemic totals, from 92.5% to 86.5%, with only Idaho, Alaska, and Wisconsin seeing sharper declines in vax rates.
Have those numbers fallen "well below the threshold needed to prevent outbreaks"? Oh buddy, you bet they have. The threshold for herd immunity is 95%. And since the beginning of the 2025-26 school year, measles cases have already been reported in Dakota and Olmsted counties, raising the statewide total to 24 confirmed cases this year.
There's some cool data viz stuff going on in that Strib story that won't be enough to distract you from the horrors but might give you a sense of the situation's gravity, and also a neat searchable table that shows vaccination and exemption rates by school. Here's a gift link—go check it out for yourself and/or for your kids.
Jessie Diggins, Decorated MN Skier, to Retire
Minnesota-born Olympic hero Jessie Diggins announced Wednesday that she plans to retire from cross-country ski racing at the end of the 2025-26 season, reports Grace Praxmarer for MPR.
"Diggins has won three Olympic medals, three World Cup titles and seven world championship medals in her career—most of which the 34-year-old won while competing with glitter on her cheeks," Praxmarer writes. She was on the cover of City Pages in 2018, ahead of the Winter Olympics in South Korea, where along with team sprint partner Kikkan Randall she'd help bring home the U.S.’s first gold medal in cross-country skiing. She told writer John Rosengren about her MN upbringing, brutal training routines, and, yes, the glitter.
“It’s this promise to myself that I am going to go out and race as hard as I can because I love what I do,” she said. “I want to honor the little girl who just wants to go super-speed.”
Happy retirement, JD!
A Shameless Plug to Go...
If you haven't already heard, there's a new Twin Cities-focused daily newsletter and podcast in town. It's called City Cast Twin Cities, and it's really good—though I am absolutely biased as one of its contributing correspondents. What can I say? I love the sound of my own voice, and now, in addition to hearing it biweekly on our own RacketCast (of course I listen to all of our episodes), I can do that once a week or so via City Cast.
Along with veteran radio host Sean McPherson and a rotating cast of guests and contributors, I've had the delight of discussing the best movie theaters in town, the "golden age" of MN film, restaurants inside of restaurants, and more since CC launched in October. Often, the eps take you further inside a story I reported on or edited for Racket—like the "what I learned in Racket" section of RacketCast but with folks who aren't my co-owners. Anyway, more news is good news if you ask us; you can sign up for the newsletter here and get the pod... wherever you get your pods!
