What’s Happened So Far In Minnetonka

Jul.16, 2010 in Internet

Since the mid-1800s Minnetonka has developed from heavily wooded wasteland through extensive farming and flourishing industrialization to its present essentially home suburban personality. The Dakota and Ojibway Indians were the first folks to settle in the area. They thought the land around Lake Minnetonka ( minne meaning water and tonka meaning big ) was the mythical home of an extinct race. The first recorded exploration of the area by european settlers was in 1822, when a group from newly assembled Fort Snelling made its way up Minnehaha stream ( then known as Brown’s stream or Falls stream ) to the lake. In 1851 the Dakotah sold the area including Minnetonka to the U. S. with the treaty of traverse des Sioux. The first census, the Territorial Census of 1857, lists 41 homes. Twenty-nine of the heads of homes are listed as farmers. The jobs of the leftover twelve are linked with the operations of Minnetonka Mill and a close-by hotel.[5]

In 1852 a claim was staked on Minnehaha creek near McGinty Road. The sawmill that was created in the thick woods of maple, oak, elm, red cedar and basswood was the first privately-operated mill in Minnesota west of the Mississippi brook. Oak timbers from this mill were used to build the first suspension bridge across the Mississippi brook at St. Anthony Falls in 1853. The settlement of Minnetonka Mills that grew up around the mill was the first permanent European-American settlement west of Minneapolis in Hennepin County. In 1855 a two-story sawmill was built with a furniture factory on the second floor. A building for polishing furniture was built on the southern side of the stream, at the present Bridge Street. Production consisted mainly of chairs and bedsteads. There are numerous Minnetonka lawyers, Minnetonka accountants and Minnetonka dentists that operate close to here.

But competition from the mills at St. Anthony, the drowning of the mill’s manager in 1857 and a fire in 1860 dashed the lofty hopes. From 1860 to 1869 the mill area had no active mill. In 1869, Thomas Perkins made a three story flour mill and an advert joining cooper shop. At the top of its production, around 1880, the mill ground about four hundred barrels of flour daily and employed 18 men. One of its brands, “Snow Ball, ” was priced around $3.00 per hundred pound, and local farmers were paid $1.00 per bushel of wheat. From 1874 to the mid-1880s, Charles Burwell managed the Minnetonka Mill Company’s operations.

Milling played a major role in the development of Minnetonka and Minnehaha creek provided power to operate these mills. Most of the earliest settlers were from new england and other eastern and central states, with Irish folks settling in north Minnetonka later on. In the 1860s Scandinavians came where the climate and terrain reminded them of their native land. Immigrants from Czechoslovakia settled in the southern part of Minnetonka from 1854 to 1871. They contributed greatly to the professional, business and rural segments of the population. The raspberries they grew in Minnetonka for sale in Hopkins prompted Hopkins to call itself “The Raspberry Capital of the World. ”

In 1860, after only eight years of activity, the sawmill closed. In 1869 a flour and grist mill were made and operated till the late 1880s. In 1874 Charles H. Burwell came to control the Minnetonka Mill Company, and he built a Victorian home on the north bank of Minnehaha creek ( Minnetonka Boulevard at McGinty Road East ) for his folks. The Charles H. Burwell House is now on the national Register of Historic Places and is owned by the city. There were 2 other mills in Minnetonka. The St. Alban’s Mill, which was less than a mile downstream from Minnetonka Mills on Minnehaha stream, operated as a flour mill from 1874 to 1881. A grist mill built on purgatory stream was washed out in a flood straight after construction. Minnetonka Mills, with its post office and port for Lake Minnetonka, was the principal business and trading center for a huge area until the 1870s.