The Preservation Instincts of Charles M. Loring
Charles Loring’s view on preserving natural landscapes was so well-known that this anonymous poem appeared in the St. Paul Daily Globe on September 8, 1889 in a humor column, “All of Everything: A Symposium of Gossip About Minneapolis Men and Matters.”
A grasping feature butcher,
With adamantine gall,
Wants to build a gallery
At Minnehaha’s fall.He wants to catch the people
Who come to see the falls,
And sell them Injun moccasins
And beaded overalls.He wants to take their “phizes,”
A dozen at a crack,
With the foliage around them
And the water at the back.But the shade of Hiawatha
No such sacrilege would brook:
And he’d shake the stone foundations
Ere a “picter had been took.”C. M. Loring doesn’t like it,
For he says he’d like to see
The lovely falls, the creek, the woods,
Just as they used to be.
Loring had chaired a commission appointed by the governor to acquire Minnehaha Falls as a state park in 1885. The land was finally acquired, after a long court fight over valuations, in the winter of 1889. (The total paid for the 180-plus acres was about $95,000.) See City of Parks for the story of how George Brackett and Henry Brown took extraordinary action to ensure the falls would be preserved as a park.
The poem in the Daily Globe appeared because the park board was considering permitting construction of a small building beside the falls for the express purpose of taking people’s photos with “the water at the back.” And of course charging them for the privilege.
That proposal elicited a sharp response from landscape architect H. W. S. Cleveland who also opposed having any structure marring the natural beauty of the falls. Cleveland used language much harsher than the reserved Loring likely would have used. In a letter to his friend William W. Folwell, Cleveland wrote on September 5, 1889,
I cannot be silent in view of this proposed vandalism which I am sure you cannot sanction, and which I am equally sure will forever be a stigma upon Minneapolis, and elicit the anathema of every man of sense and taste who visits the place.
If erected it will simply be pandering to the tastes of the army of boobies who think to boost themselves into notoriety by connecting their own stupid features with the representation of one of the most beautiful of God’s works.
The preservation passion of Loring and Cleveland is evident today in the public lakeshores and river banks throughout Minneapolis. The next time you take a stroll around a lake or beside the river, or fight to acquire as parks the sections of the Mississippi River banks that remain in private hands, say a little “thank you” to people like Loring and Cleveland who saw the need to acquire lakes and rivers as parks more than 125 years ago—and nearly got them all.
And the photography shack was never built.
David C. Smith
Minneapolis Park History 
As usual, an interesting and useful bit of history David. Millions of visitors each year enjoy the sublime charms of Minneapolis and St. Paul’s public lake and riverfront parks but most have no idea what kind of public-spirited leadership it took to establish them. Cleveland looked at the magnificent Mississippi River and said “it should be placed in a setting worthy of so precious a jewel.”
I thought that those of you who are “fighting the good fight” could use a bit of inspiration — and ammunition — this time of year. Loring and Cleveland supply plenty of both.
David C. Smith