His mother, a white German Catholic and one of seven kids raised in Frogtown, was the chief soloist at the St. Paul Cathedral, believed in social justice, helping the homeless and regularly took Williams and his three siblings to war protests and civil rights marches. She was a force, friends said, noting that for years she helped lead the Model Cities health care nonprofit that serves 1,200 Ramsey County families.

Williams’ father, Charles, the oldest of 10 children, became one of the few Black attorneys in St. Paul at the time. Charles, now 94, first served as a Ramsey County public defender and spent the last 20 years of his career as Ramsey County Family Court referee.

The Williams branch migrated to Minnesota from Topeka, Kan., in the 1920s and settled in Rondo. His grandfather founded the Hallie Q. Brown Community Center.

“They ran restaurants and stuff on University Avenue and were all very active in community,” Williams said. “They weren’t rich, but they were hardworking, prosperous people who cared about the community.”

Williams ended up serving as deputy mayor to Chris Coleman, current head of Twin Cities Habitat for Humanity. The two become friends in second grade at St. Luke’s Elementary School.

“He was a kid of color in a very white grade school. He and his cousin were one of only a handful of students of color in the school,” Coleman said.

Never in a million years did Christina Snaza imagine she would move to Wisconsin.

A native Minnesotan whose phone still sports the 218 area code of the state’s northern half, Snaza and her husband were drawn across the St. Croix River three years ago from their home in Oakdale when they learned how affordable and convenient it would be to move to Somerset, Wis.

“We still call ourselves Minnesotans,” said Snaza, who now has a Wisconsin-born toddler.

Whether by happenstance or by design, thousands have made the same move into western Wisconsin since the four-lane St. Croix Crossing Bridge opened in 2017 and slashed commute times to the Twin Cities and the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport. The rural hamlet of Roberts has grown 20% since the bridge opened, with some of its 2,100 residents moving into a subdivision jokingly referred to as “Little Woodbury.” Vikings flags snap in the breeze outside homes in the Somerset neighborhood of River Hills. And at Sweet Beet Bakery in New Richmond, owner Ashley Adkison says she has house hunters stopping in every Saturday to pick up tips on the local schools as well as some of her fresh-baked “Croixnuts” pastries. “They ask ‘Is everything open all week?’ ” she said, the city residents trying to prep for life in a small town.

The residential boom has made St. Croix County the fastest-growing county in Wisconsin. The bridge opening was like a “green light switch went on,” said Rob Kreibich, the president and CEO of the New Richmond Chamber of Commerce and a recently elected Republican member of the Wisconsin State Assembly.

Less crime, lower taxes and a small-town feel all play a part in drawing folks out of the Twin Cities, he said. Some new arrivals are looking for a place to start a family, but plenty of retirees or near-retirees have come as well, some citing lower sales tax or the absence of state tax on Social Security income as a factor. For others, a move to New Richmond has meant being closer to their up-north cabin.

Realtor Gina Moe-Knutson said some town councils have courted the growth while others were reluctant to let go of their rural identity. The first locale across the bridge, St. Joseph Township, has seen modest growth of 8% since the bridge opening, while it’s 19% in New Richmond. The city invested in infrastructure 25 years ago, said former director of planning and development Robert Barbian, building out water and sewer connections and plotting roads across farm fields as adjacent township land was annexed into the city for developments that became Waters Edge, Fox Run, Whispering Pines, and Gloverdale. The result is the city’s footprint has grown from 6,183 acres in 2015 to 7,674 acres today, said New Richmond City Administrator Noah Wiedenfeld.

“We looked ahead quite a few leaps,” Barbian said.

The trees in your city look different when you’re the one planting them.

It’s work that doesn’t stop when the snow flies and the ground is too cold to dig. So on a frigid December afternoon, Minneapolis’ Midtown Greenway echoed with the buzz of chain saws and the creak of timbers as a Tree Trust crew pruned the trees and brush, cut back invasive species and freed saplings from strangling vines. All the hard jobs it takes to keep the metro evergreen.

Caring for an urban forest means taking care to train the next generation of skilled workers who are drawn to hard, rewarding jobs out in the cold and the heat and the rain.

“A program like this really changes how you view the outdoors,” said arborist-in-training Gianna Broadhead, taking a break from stacking logs taller than herself in tidy piles beside the greenway. She lives near the Mississippi River and now, when she walks by its banks, she can identify trees on sight, spot the invasive species and marvel at the old-growth giants.

Broadhead and her teammates are in the final weeks of Tree Trust’s Branches program — a 10-week paid apprenticeship in tree care and landscaping, under the supervision of experienced staff.

This has been Tree Trust’s dual mission since the nonprofit was founded almost 50 years ago. Minneapolis neighborhoods, decimated by Dutch elm disease, needed trees. The city’s teens and young adults needed work.

The idea of an office job didn’t appeal to Broadhead, but Tree Trust’s mission statement did: transforming lives and landscapes.