It's a playful rivalry now, but competition between Mpls. and St. Paul was once fierce

The Twin Cities rivalry between Minneapolis and St. Paul may be mostly good-natured these days.

But in the late 1800s, as the cities grew rapidly from frontier towns into centers of politics and industry, the competition between them was fierce.

Each wanted to claim the prize of being the bigger city, and those tensions came to a head during the census of 1890.