Yes, and it is the best hour you will spend in downtown Minneapolis without a car. The Stone Arch Bridge is roughly a mile from the front door of Oakland’s on 9th, the route passes the city’s best museum and its oldest ruins on the way, and the bridge itself is fully open again after a two-year restoration. Here is how we send guests, what is open right now, and the two things that have changed this year.
The route from 215 South 9th Street
Walk out of the brownstone and head northeast, toward the river. Nicollet Mall is a block west and makes the prettiest first stretch; Marquette Avenue is a block east and is quicker. Either way you cross Washington Avenue, the old edge of the milling district, and keep going until the towers thin out and the flour-mill walls begin. Aim for Portland Avenue: it runs straight down to Mill Ruins Park at 102 Portland Avenue South, and the bridge starts right there. The whole walk is flat until the last block, which slopes gently down to the water.
One honest note about the skyway. In cold weather you can do the first part of this walk indoors, but the Oaklands is not connected to the skyway system; you walk a block to reach it. That block is the same one you would walk anyway, so it costs you nothing.
What you are walking to
The Stone Arch Bridge was built between 1881 and 1883 for James J. Hill’s railroad, the first step in a line that eventually reached the Pacific. MnDOT’s history of the bridge gives the numbers: 2,100 feet long, 23 arches, an 817-foot curve at the west end, about $650,000 to build. The last passenger train crossed in 1978, the county bought it in 1989, and the state has owned it since 1992. Today it carries only walkers and cyclists, which is why it is the one place in the city where you can stand in the middle of the Mississippi with St. Anthony Falls on one side and the skyline on the other.
Our building went up six years after the bridge did. Both survived the twentieth century by the skin of their teeth, and if you have read our post on the 1889 Minneapolis that is still standing, the bridge belongs on that list too.
The restoration is finished
If the last time you visited was 2024 or early 2025, you found the bridge fenced off. Crews spent that time repointing the mortar on the entire structure and repairing or replacing stone, a $38.5 million job. MnDOT’s project page now reads “Project complete,” with the work dated April 2024 through July 2025. You can cross end to end again, and the stone is the cleanest it has looked in a century.
Two stops on the way
Mill City Museum
Mill City Museum is built inside the ruins of what was once the world’s largest flour mill, at 704 South 2nd Street, one block before the park. The Flour Tower elevator ride and the rooftop observation deck are the two things worth the ticket. Adult admission is $15, children 5 to 17 are $8, and note that tickets are sold on-site only, not online. If your stay includes Saturday, September 19, 2026, that is a free admission day, 10 AM to 5 PM.
Mill Ruins Park, with one caveat
The park sits partly underneath the bridge, with raised walkways over the exposed tailraces of the old mills. It is open 6 AM to midnight and is well worth the detour, but the Park Board’s page currently carries a construction notice: the lower ruins can only be reached from the trail entrance near the 35W Bridge Remembrance Garden, and there is no through access, so you leave the way you came in. Plan it as an out-and-back rather than a shortcut to the bridge. The Upper St. Anthony Falls Lock and Dam visitor center next door runs a summer season that ended September 5, so do not count on it this fall.
Making a loop of it
Cross the bridge to the east bank, follow the path to your left along Main Street through St. Anthony Main, and come back over the Hennepin Avenue Bridge. That turns a there-and-back into a loop of a couple of miles with the falls, the skyline and the old riverfront all in one go. In the evening, the walk back down Nicollet Mall to 9th Street is lit the whole way, and the Central Library and Target sit on the route if you need a stop.
Why this matters for a longer stay
Travel nurses, relocating families and people here on a month-long project all tell us the same thing: the days that feel good are the ones with a walk in them. This is the walk. It costs nothing, needs no car, and changes with the season, from open water in September to a frozen falls in January. If you are still deciding whether to bring a car at all, our guide to getting around from 9th Street covers the rest.
Every studio at Oakland’s on 9th is fully furnished with a full kitchen, WiFi, utilities and free laundry included, by the night, the week or the month. Check availability or call us at (612) 314-5124, and we will point you toward the river.