Minneapolis Park History

I recently received a note from Etch Andrajack about his fond memories of growing up near Hi-View Park in Northeast Minneapolis and what an important part the park played in the lives of his family and friends. His note prompted me to revisit the history tab on the Park Board’s page about Hi-View Park at minneapolisparks.org. (Every park has a history tab. I wrote most of them in 2008, but they are updated by park board staff as new developments warrant.)

In reviewing Hi-View’s history I was reminded of a tool the park board used to create or expand several recreation parks that are likely remembered as fondly as Etch remembers Hi-View. Landowners who don’t pay their property taxes eventually may forfeit their land. That land can be sold by the state or managed for “public benefit.” The Minneapolis Board of Park Commissioners, as the Park Board was once officially called, acquired the land for Hi-View Park–free–under the public benefit provisions. I’ve cited below a section of the history of Hi-View Park, which I wrote for the park board’s website, that mentions other park land acquired through tax forfeiture.

“Hi-View Park was acquired from the state in 1950. The state had acquired the property for non-payment of property taxes. The original park was 3.74 acres, but was expanded by 0.12 acres in 1961 at a cost of $4,900. The park board acquired the land at a time when it was looking to fill gaps in playgrounds identified in a 1944 study of park facilities. While the neighborhood around Hi-View was not on the list of neighborhoods needing playgrounds, the park board seized the opportunity to obtain free land from the state, when it discovered the land was on the state’s list of tax-forfeited properties. The undeveloped land had been used as a playing field by children in the neighborhood for years.

The first instances of the park board seeking land on state tax-forfeiture lists was in 1905 when it acquired several lots to expand Glenwood (Wirth) Park and in 1914, when it acquired Russell Triangle. With the acquisition of four lots to enlarge Peavey Park and the acquisition of Northeast Field partly from the state’s tax forfeiture list in 1941, the park board began looking to the state as a source of cheap land.

In a matter of a few years after World War II, the park board acquired nearly all of Bossen and Perkins Hill parks and portions of McRae and Kenny from the state for no cost. The park board also eventually acquired part of North Mississippi Park from the state. By the late 1940s, the park board routinely scanned lists of land the state had acquired for non-payment of taxes and spotted the Hi-View land on such a list.”

I mention the acquisition of tax-forfeited land because it underscores the many creative methods used to acquire the land that became a celebrated and heavily used park system. Some parks are used primarily by neighborhood kids, others by people from across the entire city, state and beyond.

The park system is the result, in the end, of dedicated, persistent, efficient, and creative public servants. And it is still operated, managed, and adapted to our ever-changing needs and desires by the same type of praise-worthy public servants to whom we all owe a debt of gratitude. At the very least some respect.

David C. Smith