The Lake Minnetonka area is composed of the communities of Deephaven, Excelsior, Greenwood, Minnetonka, Minnetonka Beach, Minnetrista, Mound, Orono, Shorewood, Spring Park, Tonka Bay, Victoria, Wayzata and Woodland, Minnesota.
A History of Lake Minnetonka
Lake Minnetonka has long been one of the Upper Midwest’s most popular summertime destinations. its allure has endured from the earliest Native peoples to the vacationers and suburban dwellers of today. Located approximately fifteen miles west of Minneapolis, in Hennepin County, Minnesota, Lake Minnetonka includes 14,000 acres, 121 miles of shoreline, and has a maximum depth of 113 feet. Geologists call it an ice block or kettle lake created by melted blocks of ice from the retreating Wisconsin Glacier. The lake is fed by Six Mile Creek into Halsted Bay and flows out at Grays Bay into Minnehaha Creek traveling 22 miles east to the Mississippi River.
Native Peoples: 8000 BCE—1862 CE Lake Minnetonka’s story began about 10,000 years ago, when the melting Laurentide Ice Sheet formed a sprawling body of water covering approximately 14,500 acres. The region was originally inhabited by Ancestral Natives who were known to hunt large game animals. Later inhabitants of the region constructed land features used for ceremonial, burial, and domestic purposes. Thus, they are often referred to collectively as the “Mound Builders.” This ancient culture, which encompassed much of Midwest America, reached its apex circa 1150 CE. It ceased to exist by 1500 CE. The City of Mound, located at the western end of the Upper Lake, takes its name from the large concentration of earthworks that once existed in the area. One group alone was comprised of 69 individual mounds.
By the time Euro-Americans reached Minnesota in the early 1800s, the region was inhabited by the Dakota people. The Mdewakanton band of Dakota, who primarily resided in the Minnesota and Mississippi river valleys, frequented Lake Minnetonka to hunt, fish, and harvest wild rice and maple sap. Spirit Knob, a peninsula in present-day Woodland, was an especially sacred place, as was Enchanted Island in the Upper Lake.
In the 1850s, several controversial treaties between the Dakota and the United States government were signed and broken, leading to the U.S.–Dakota War of 1862. During this war, a purported six-hundred civilians, seventy-seven U.S. soldiers, and an estimated 150 Dakota warriors were killed. The Dakota were ultimately defeated and over 300 of them were sentenced to death, though 264 were pardoned by President Abraham Lincoln. Most Dakota were exiled from Minnesota in early 1863.
Frontier Period: 1822—1867 Lake Minnetonka was “discovered” by Euro-Americans several times during the early 1800s – first in 1822, but not made official until 1852, when Minnesota’s territorial governor, Alexander Ramsey, formally named the lake "Minnetonka," a rough translation of the Dakota name meaning "Big Water. " The first white settlement on the lake was Excelsior on the south shore, followed by Wayzata on the north shore in 1854 and Mound on the Upper Lake at about the same time.
Early pioneers settling near Lake Minnetonka in the 1850s and 1860s made a living by clear-cutting the land for farming. However, the area’s agrarian economy saw a radical change when the railroad reached the town of Wayzata in 1867. With its pristine waters and “curative climate” now within reach, Lake Minnetonka saw a dramatic increase in hotel and boarding house construction. Tourists from the east and south who spent entire summers at the lake began to arrive in droves.
“Glory Years:” 1867—1897 By the end of the 1880s Lake Minnetonka was a world-renowned destination for wealthy tourists, accomodating them in three of its grandest hotels – Hotel Saint Louis (1879), Lake Park Hotel (1879) and Hotel Lafayette (1882). The Hotel Lafayette, which stood five stories tall and boasted more than 400 guest rooms, was the largest structure ever built on Lake Minnetonka’s shores. With these large hotels came large steamboats as well. "The Belle of Minnetonka," the largest vessel ever to ply Lake Minnetonka’s waters, spanned a length of 285 feet and could purportedly carry up to 2,500 passengers.
The dredging of Hull's Narrows in Tonka Bay in 1873 improved boat access to the Upper Lake and several more hotels were built including the Lakeview House, Chapman House and Bartlett’s Hotel on Cook’s Bay. The extension of a railroad spur from Wayzata to Spring Park eventually led to the opening of the Hotel Del Otero in 1892.
With the incorporation of the Minnetonka Yacht Club in 1882, sailing became a popular activity on Lake Minnetonka. One of the club’s co-founders, Hazen Burton, debuted a new type of sailboat in 1893 called a racing scow. Gliding over the water rather than through it, Burton’s boat, the "Onawa," won practically every race it entered and revolutionized the sport of inland sailing.
By the end of 1887 the “Glory Years” of Lake Minnetonka had begun to fade. A number of factors including new railroad regulations, new vacation spots, and a national economic depression contributed to this decline. Lake Minnetonka’s hotels and steamboats suffered tough economic losses, and many of them closed down only to be demolished or razed by fire. During this same time, however, the lake saw a surge in the construction of summer cottages and country homes. Westward extension of the Great Northern railroad spur from Spring Park in 1900 led to commercial and summer cottage development in the vicinity of Mound and Upper Lake Minnetonka as well.
“Golden Years:” 1906—1926 By the turn of the twentieth century the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and Saint Paul had become a large metropolis of more than 600,000 residents. The local economy was driven by the flour milling industry, and many of the moguls who owned the mills built grand country estates on Lake Minnetonka. A large number of middle-class families were able to move out to the lake year round as well.
With their jobs located in downtown Minneapolis and Saint Paul, many of the lake’s new middle-class residents struggled to find a viable way to commute to work. Workers employed by the lake’s wealthy residents experienced a similar struggle. Under the direction of Thomas Lowry, the Twin City Rapid Transit Company (TCRT) constructed an ambitious streetcar line from Minneapolis to Excelsior in 1905. Commuting time from Lake Minnetonka to downtown Minneapolis was cut down to approximately 45 minutes.
With its many bays, islands, and peninsulas comprising 125 miles of shoreline, Lake Minnetonka was not a practical place to serve by rail. TCRT overcame this by constructing six “Express Boats” in 1906 that would make scheduled stops at 26 different landings around the lake. These vessels were each 70 feet long, nearly 15 feet wide, and resembled TCRT’s streetcars in every detail: split cane seating, pocket windows, and a yellow and red color scheme. Thus, they were nicknamed “streetcar boats.”
Also in 1906, TCRT constructed Big Island Park on Big Island to promote streetcar ridership on weekends and holidays. With manicured landscapes and beautiful buildings designed by a locally-renowned architect, the park was a bold expression of TCRT’s achievements. Three large, double-ended side-wheelers were constructed to ferry visitors directly to the park from Excelsior. Most of the park’s visitors were day tourists hailing from the Twin Cities.
This era was short-lived, however. Operating at extreme deficits, TCRT closed Big Island Park in 1911, only five years after opening it. The park was demolished several years later. The streetcar boats, on the other hand, performed very well until 1921, when the fleet reached peak ridership. However, their success also came to an abrupt end. With improved roads and rising interest in automobiles, many of Lake Minnetonka’s middle-class residents stopped riding the streetcar boats, thus ending their viability. TCRT made the decision to discontinue all steamboat service on Lake Minnetonka in 1926, and three of the streetcar boats were scuttled (purposely sunk) that summer. Three others were scrapped.
Twentieth Century: 1926—2000 Although the streetcar boats ceased to exist after 1926, the streetcar line to Excelsior remained in operation until 1932, when service was cut back to the suburb of Hopkins. The entire streetcar system was finally replaced by buses in 1954.
With the opening of Excelsior Amusement Park in 1925, Lake Minnetonka continued to be a popular destination among day tourists. As one of the most well-known attractions in Minnesota, the Park operated with great success and its adjacent dance hall, "Danceland," played host to several notable guests over its lifetime, including the Beach Boys in 1963 and the Rolling Stones in 1964. The park continued to entertain the masses until its closure in 1973 and was demolished shortly thereafter. Danceland closed in 1968 and succumbed to arson in 1973.
In the 1920’s, the world-famous singing trio, The Andrews Sisters, began their long connection with Lake Minnetonka, spending summers with relatives in Mound. After achieving stardom, they continued to hold a fondness for the lake, returning for occasional visits. In 1946, three entrepreneurs started a metal fabricating business in Mound. Their company, Mound Metalcraft, operated out of the old Mound Public school building. After marketing products such as metal tie racks, they obtained the designs for some wooden toys made by Streater Industries in Spring Park. Thus began the manufacturing of metal toy vehicles under the “Tonka” brand. In 1955, the company’s name was officially changed to Tonka Toys and the company steadily grew and expanded its plant in Mound. Due to competition in the toy industry, the Mound factory operations closed down in 1983.
One of the most destructive events in Lake Minnetonka’s history occurred on May 6, 1965, when two F4 tornadoes caused widespread damage in the area. Hundreds of homes and several lives were lost during the episode. Today the event is remembered as the Tornado Outbreak of 1965.
During this same period, Lake Minnetonka saw a surge in property subdivisions with large estates being broken down into smaller parcels of buildable land. Older cottages were either torn down or retrofitted for year-round use. With highways and shopping centers being constructed nearby, Lake Minnetonka had essentially been absorbed by post-war suburbia.
Lake Minnetonka Today In 1979 the owner of an underwater construction company located the wreck of a scuttled steamboat lying on the bottom of Lake Minnetonka. The wreck was raised back to the surface the following summer. Once surfaced, the name gradually began to appear on its side: it was the streetcar steamboat Minnehaha. Following a $500,000, volunteer-driven restoration, Minnehaha was returned to passenger service in 1996. The boat lost its launch site in 2019 and has remained in storage since that time. It was placed in the National Register of Historic Places in 2021 and it remains carefully preserved as the search for a new launch site continues.
With its natural beauty and close proximity to the Twin Cities, Lake Minnetonka continues to be a desirable place to live and visit. Lakeside communities such as Excelsior, Wayzata and Mound continue to thrive, attracting countless boaters, tourists, and local residents with shops, dining, and historic charm.
