Jason P. Amundsen
a virtual resume
corporate work
Web Copy: Sports and Recreation
Michael Bartus Realtor: www.hometwincities.com
If sports and outdoor recreation is part of your lifestyle, few
locations compare with the Twin Cities. With our mix of
professional sports, amateur play and our ultimate playground:
the great outdoors, we’re fortunate to call this our home.
Minneapolis plays host to five professional sports teams. There’s
talk of a new outdoor stadium near downtown Minneapolis for our
two-time World Series Champions Minnesota Twins. The players
Harmon Killebrew, Rod Carew, and Kirby Puckett all gained
national fame for their work around the bases with the Twins.
For an afternoon of zany antics like Sumo wrestling, Velcro-suited
people clinging to outfield walls and maybe a little baseball, the
semi-pro Saint Paul Saints are entertaining. Their intimate
Midway Stadium home in St. Paul holds just a hair over 6,000
seats. And Saints co-owner, actor Bill Murray has been spotted
selling programs outside on opening night.
Grand Rapids for Lakeshoredreams.com
By Jason Amundsen
Located in Itasca County, adjacent to the Mississippi River and
her headwaters, is the city of Grand Rapids. Its nearly 8,000
residents live near fantastic woodlands and almost 1,000 lakes
and ponds, which accounts for its popularity as a vacation
destination. The city is the region’s shopping center and has a
long history of hospitality dating back to just past Minnesota’s
founding in the late 1850s.
The first European settlers and missionaries praised the area
around Grand Rapids for its massive fields of wild rice and
abundant fowl. Yet it was the pine forests that began luring men
into the region to build the first settlements and would eventually
create a booming lumber industry.
Itasca County was one of the nine counties designated by the
early Minnesota legislature. In 1850 U.S. Census listed 97
inhabitants in Itasca County, but even that low figure is suspect.
An accurate headcount would have been nearly impossible with
the pioneers and nomadic trappers living in the woods. These
inhabitants lived in an area that surveyors estimated was
between 5,800 square miles and 20,000 square miles, or 5 to
17 times the size of Rhode Island. Ten years later, in 1860, the
U.S. Census pegged the number of residents of Itasca County
at only 51.
