Bemidji Minnesota
Bemidji Minnesota |
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Just the FactsNOTE: The data that follows derives primarily from the 1990 U.S. census and as such is a decade out of date. Comparative data for the U.S. at large and for the St. Louis metro area are presented to establish perspective. St. Louis was chosen because it is the largest city on the river as well as smack dab in the middle.
Bemidji is a two McDonalds town; one McDonalds too many given the population, but there are all those college mouths to feed. The Lake is beautiful and the downtown center is intact and vibrant. The first thing I noticed in Bemidji (apart from Paul Bunyan and Babe) was the delightful outdoor sculpture spread around town. The photo to the right is an example; the sculpture is by Wanda R. Odegard and titled Niimii. Bemidji is a tourist center. Their own "Visitors and Convention Bureau" lists tourism as Bemidji's first industry. This little town of 11,000 has over 600 motel rooms spread across over a dozen motels right in downtown Bemidji. Tourist activities include fishing, boating, water sports, camping, bicycling, hiking, cross country skiing, snowmobiling, and winter sports. In addition to the regular tourist traffic, Bemidji is actively marketing itself as a convention and meeting site. There is a small airport just outside of town and Bemidji has three car rental companies ready to service visitors arriving by plane.
The river in Bemidji is hard to find because of the lake. The Mississippi flows through Lake Bemidji. The town wraps around the west side and southern tip of the lake. On the east side of the lake are residential neighborhoods. The road out of town is state highway 19 which follows the east lakeshore. About halfway up the lakeshore highway 19 crosses over a small outlet leaving the lake. This is the Mississippi; it's just about wide enough for two rowboats to pass each other. When we crossed it last, a fishing boat was leaving the river and heading into the lake. |
To the left you see beautiful Lake Bemidji framed by the sculpture "Loneliness" by Ross Hagemeister.
A quick look at the statistics and Bemidji appears to be pretty average except for the lower per capita income and higher poverty rate. This is at first puzzling since a trip to Bemidji doesn't support these facts. My assumption is that the statistics are skewed by the overwhelming presence of Bemidji State University. Students at the University account for 44% of Bemidji's population, and students are generally poorer than not. Bemidji is what's referred to as a college town.
Still, Bemidji is not a center of wealth. The town's median family income is $10,000 a year less than the national average. Again I think we're dealing with a skewed figure here which in this case is the national average. Bemidji has only 10 households with a yearly income above $150,000. In other words there are a few pretty well off people in Bemidji, but Bemidji does not have any representative members of the "filthy stinking rich."
As we've already noted Bemidji is a college town, and with a student population equal to almost half the town's total population, the presence of Bemidji State University is a major influence. Culturally there's more to do and see in Bemidji than there would be without the University. I also assume the University plays a role in Bemidji's unusually large variety of religious faiths. There are churches in Bemidji representing over a dozen different faiths as compared with say Grand Rapids just down river where only three different denominations are represented. Lutheranism however is Bemidji's dominant faith--an indication of the town's heritage. The original European settlers in the area were Scandinavian and German.