In a recent piece, The Winona Daily News writers “take a crack at identifying the icons of Winona.” In other words, what are the landmarks, businesses, and cultural idiosyncrasies that make us the community that we are today?
Staff writers ask the questions, “What person, place or thing do you value most in the Winona area? What landmark do you show off to visitors? What local food do you brag about far and wide? When you think of Winona, what image appears in your mind?” They go on to list a wide range of things and places- from the bluffs to the boathouses, from Bloedow’s Bakery to Bub’s Brewing Company.
At the top of the list is Winona’s famed bluff, Sugarloaf, of which Andrew Link writes, “If Winona has an iconic object, it is the odd-shaped lump of limestone rising high above the intersection of Hwy. 14/61 and Hwy. 43 on the east end of town. Nature didn’t shape the squared off rock, that was the work of the brothers O’Dea – John and Stephan — quarrymen who whittled away the blufftop for use as building stone in the late 1800s.” Indeed, it is impossible to picture Winona without this landmark bluff.
Of the boathouses, Melissa Carlo says, “They’re in various colors and various states of repair. Most don’t have electricity or running water—except the water that runs beneath them. They afford their dwellers a constant communion with the Mississippi River, rising on the spring flood waters and becoming locked in ice during the winter.”
While a debate may rage on about just what should be included on this list, the Winona Daily News reporters take a pretty good crack at creating a fairy comprehensive guide to some of the things that help define Winona.
You can see the full list here