Why did the U.S. Navy once build warships in Savage, Minn.?

CURIOUS MINNESOTA Listen and subscribe to our Curious Minnesota podcast: Apple Podcasts | Spotify During World War II, the banks of the Minnesota River in Savage were home to a strange sight: the hulls of ocean tankers rising above the prairie. Cargill Inc. built an emergency shipyard in Savage, a suburban city southwest of Minneapolis, for the U.S. Navy. It was called Port Cargill, and in 1943, the Minneapolis Sunday Tribune called it “probably the most incongruous sight in the Northwest today.” Minnesota workers built 22 U.S. Navy ships at Port Cargill during the war, according to Lindsay Marshall, executive director of the Scott County Historical Society. The tankers would barely fit under the Mendota Bridge as they made their way to the Mississippi River in St. Paul, on to New Orleans and then the South Pacific. Advertisement In October 2026, in part because of this shipbuilding history, the National Park Service designated Savage as Minnesota’s World War II Heritage City. Kim Brown, who grew up in Minnesota and now lives in Florida, heard stories about the Savage ships from his grandfather, an electrician who worked on them. As Brown’s family story goes, his grandfather and a group of workers traveled all the way to the Gulf of Mexico aboard a tanker called the Genesee in 1943, Brown said. They finished work on the ship during the route and then rode the train home, he said. “Hard to imagine them building this in the Minnesota River bottoms,” Brown said.