MORA, MINN. - Two alarm clocks jolt Dawn Davis out of slumber in the countryside south of Mora at 4:15 a.m. One she winds by hand, just in case an overnight storm snuffs out her power.

For an hour, padding about in a fraying robe, sipping coffee from a bucket-sized mug, she forces herself awake. Then, in thick country darkness, she climbs into her miniature red Ford and heads south, racing 70 miles to her job in downtown Minneapolis.

By the time she returns home in the evening, she has about an hour of leisure before she hits the sack. An hour?

"That," winces the 58-year-old, "is what my friends say."

Davis is part of a rising tide of Minnesota commuters leaving home long before sunrise -- a group whose ranks are swelling by 10,000 people each year, new census figures show. More than 300,000 are out the door by 6 a.m., nearly twice as many as in 1990. It's a national trend, but one that's hitting Minnesota harder than most.

Although Minnesota is only a middling-sized state, it ranks in the top 15 nationally both for the growth in sheer numbers of pre-dawn commuters and the rate of that growth -- and close to the top among northern states.

"It really tells us something about the American character: that we will trade almost everything to get what we want," said Curtis Johnson, a former chairman of the Metropolitan Council who now leads, from Edina, a national consulting firm devoted to metropolitan issues.

"Long drives before sunrise, the cost, the inconvenience, the loss of family time," he said. "If we want something bad enough -- the bigger home, the feeling of safety, whatever it might be -- we'll trade almost anything to get it."

Predawn commutes are causing ripple effects that rise from the personal and intimate to the vast and societal. They're changing family lives. They're forcing businesses to change their hours and their ways. They're forcing many others to wake up early to serve them. They're raising concern about overcrowding of once-quiet rural roads -- and the cost to everyone of fixing that.

"Out here in the country, we now have a 'rush hour,' and it's increasing every year. It all heads south from 5:30 to 7:30 and it's all headin' north in the late afternoon," said Mora Mayor Greg Ardner. "There are some concerns that people here can't get on the highway. And what are you going to do? You can't put a traffic light on a highway, it's 55 miles per hour all the way to Cambridge."

Trickle-down effects

The Dunn Brothers coffee chain has "belts" in terms of when its stores open, said company President Chris Eilers.

"Urban stores open about 6:30. First- and second-ring suburbs, 6. And in the outskirts -- Elk River, Monticello -- it's 5:30," he said. "Typically, what sparks it is the number of people who show up before you open, pounding on the door and wanting their coffee."

Many of those enduring this life admit they sometimes question their own sanity.

"There are times when I think, 'Why are we doing this?'" said Karen Duhn, who stares straight into the sun both morning and evening as she commutes to downtown Minneapolis from a lake near Dassel, in Meeker County, west of the Twin Cities. "But it's becoming the norm. I have people at work who come in from Foley."

For her, the long commute means missing out entirely, for most of the week, on the sweet sleepy morning moments with kids that many others treasure.

"I don't see anyone in the morning but the dog," she said. "The kids don't need to get to school til 9:10, and I'm at work by 8:30. No one's interested in getting up with me. Some days it's really hard."

Kristin Eager, a buyer for Macy's in downtown Minneapolis, comes in from a different direction -- from Isanti. Where Duhn copes because her husband switched careers to stay home and get the kids off to school, Eager needs to help pry her fiancé's kids out of bed by shortly after 6 -- "a struggle," she concedes -- so the two of them can get the kids to day care.