Minneapolis Park History

Last week the park board sent out notifications of the official opening of new facilities at two parks. First, on Wednesday there was a ribbon cutting at the new skate park at Folwell Park in north Minneapolis. Then on Friday, the ribbon was cut for a new playground at Lynnhurst Park in south Minneapolis. The ceremonies were attended by the park commissioner for each district, Charles Rucker at Folwell and Cathy Abene at Lynnhurst.

Google Maps tells me the parks are about 7.6 miles apart as the crow flies — and that crow would be flying almost exactly due north or south, because the two parks are both on Humboldt Avenue. Or its equivalent. Humboldt Avenue South on the east side of Lynnhurst Park is now called West Minnehaha Parkway which connects Lake Harriet to Minnehaha Creek south of 50th Street and the Lynnhurst Recreation Center.

Coincidentally, I visited Folwell Park the Sunday before the ribbon cutting. It is one of the most underappreciated and on that perfect Sunday afternoon one of the most underused parks in the city. I visited the park precisely because of its location on Humboldt Avenue. I had recently read a fascinating biography of Alexander von Humboldt, the man for whom the avenue was named. The book is a powerful reminder of the interconnectedness of everything on the planet.

Humboldt was a German scientist known and revered around the world (when nearly all people still believed in science!) in the early 1800s. St. Paul’s Humboldt High School is also named for him as are many places, natural features around the globe, and many species of flora and fauna — as well as an asteroid, a mineral, and a geographical feature of the moon.

Folwell and Lynnhurst are not the only parks that sit along Humboldt Avenue. The avenue also runs on the west side of Bethune Park and on the east side of Shingle Creek and Creek View Park.

There’s also the modest Humboldt Triangle on Humboldt Avenue North which played a role in the impending fight between the park board and the Minnesota highway department over the taking of park land for highways. You can read about that in my history of the triangle on the Park Board’s website. (Yikes! Note my error in calling von Humboldt by the wrong first name there; he was Alexander, not Friedrich.)

The improvements to Folwell and Lynnhurst were both part of the Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board’s 20-year Neighborhood Park Plan in partnership with the City of Minneapolis. A Youth Activities Grant from Hennepin County also contributed to the skate park at Folwell.

David Carpentier Smith