Minneapolis Park Memory: Treasure
Filed under: Minneapolis Golf Courses, Minneapolis Park Memory, Minneapolis Parks: General | Tags: Hiawatha Golf Course, Lake Harriet, Minnehaha Park, Powderhorn Park
Comments (1) How I have enjoyed the Minneapolis parks: watching fireworks at Powderhorn Park; concerts at Lake Harriet, with picnics on the hill; swimming and canoeing at Calhoun; walking in Minnehaha Park and eating crab cakes at Sea Salt; walking and biking at Nokomis; watching my children play hockey at various parks, and baseball at McRae and Diamond Lake; teaching the children to skate at Diamond Lake; my sons in their early teens taking the bus from our home at 48th and Clinton all the way to Theodore Wirth Park to play golf; my boys golfing at Hiawatha and telling us that they played with two really nice “old guys.” (These “old guys” happened to be friends of ours from church and were our age, in their 40s.)
My son Glen would leave the house in the summer early in the morning, bike to Lake Harriet with his fishing equipment, climb on a tree branch overhanging the lake and stay until suppertime. He enjoyed being outdoors even if he didn’t catch fish.
But here is my most treasured memory: In 1945, my future husband took me canoeing at Calhoun and then into Lake of the Isles, and gave me my engagement ring.
Alice Streed
The Romantic Route (from City of Parks, Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board)
Minneapolis Park Memory: A Hike Down Memory Lane
Filed under: Minneapolis Park Memory, Minneapolis Parks: General | Tags: Minneapolis parks, Minnehikers
Leave a Comment The Minneapolis Municipal Hiking Club celebrated its 90th anniversary this year. On the first Saturday of January every year, we do an anniversary hike, starting at Rarig Center on the West Campus and continuing on West River Parkway all the way to Minnehaha Falls. The hiking club was started by Theodore Wirth in 1920, and they hiked from Minnehaha Falls to Riverside Park, where they cooked coffee over an open fire and enjoyed donuts. The club has done this hike every year, but in reverse. I have hiked this route many times, even in bitter cold weather, as cold as minus 16 degrees. We end up with dinner at one of the churches. I believe the hiking club has hiked in every park in Minneapolis over the years. The club has also donated over $21,000 for flowering crabapple trees and other tree varieties, also benches by the rose and peace gardens. I recently helped edit a history booklet highlighting some of the activities and trips taken by members.
Edith Johnson
Editor’s note: For more information on the history of the Minneapolis Municipal Hiking Club, or Minnehikers, visit the Special Collections department of the Central Library in Minneapolis. The collection includes hiking club yearbooks for almost every year 1924-1999. The Minnesota Historical Society Library has a more limited collection featuring the earlier years.
We would enjoy reading more memories of club hikes in these pages.
Minneapolis Park Memory: Best Days of My Life
Filed under: Minneapolis Park Memory | Tags: Brackett Park, Keewaydin Park, Longfellow Park, Minnehaha Falls
Comments (3) I grew up in South Minneapolis and enjoyed all the parks especially Minnehaha and the Falls. I have a picture of my Girl Scout Brownie Troop taken there (that would be along time ago). My family has had many wiener roasts at the “deer pen” and several family reunions attended by 80+ people from many different states. We just had one this past August at Wabun Park at the east end of Minnehaha Park. It has recently been remodeled and is a wonderful park.
My best memories have to do with our local neighborhood parks that aren’t necessarily on a tourist’s list, such as Keewaydin, Brackett, Longfellow, Hiawatha and many others. My favorite park was Longfellow, where my husband spent his childhood years skating and playing hockey, football and baseball. He was president of the Longfellow Activities Council for seven years and was a baseball coach. Those were the “good old days” when you could send your kids to the park without worrying about kidnapping and the like.
Activities at the park brought kids and parents together; we were one large family that would be known as a “village” today. Those were the best days of my life.
Shirley Adler
Minneapolis Park Memory: North to South
Filed under: Minneapolis Park Memory | Tags: Glenwood Park, Lake Hiawatha, Lake Nokomis, Minnehaha Falls, Victory Memorial Drive, Webber Pool
Comments (6) Minneapolis truly is a “City of Parks” for everyone — north, south, east , and west. As a ten-year-old tomboy in north Minneapolis, the neighbor kids and I would hike three miles to Glenwood Park, where we hunted for golf balls at the golf course, climbed the ski jump, and went wading in the creek until the golf workers would yell at us, “Hey, you little brats, get the heck out of that ‘crick’ NOW!” We would find a shady spot and dry off, giggling while eating our peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Or we would hike along Victory Memorial Drive to the Camden Pool, where every kid in north Minneapolis came to swim or get a bath. It was jam-packed with grubby young bodies all day long! When I was twelve, we moved to south Minneapolis, the Nokomis Lake and Lake Hiawatha area, another neat area for having fun in the parks.
After marriage and four kids, it was my kids who kept up the “fun in the parks” tradition, especially at Minnehaha Park. They investigated every nook and cranny, often ending up at the Falls, where they would crawl down the steep banks to the bottom of the Falls and work their way behind the water falls so nobody could see them and then make scary sounds and howls when little kids came to look at the water falling. Down the path from the Falls to the river was a large tree on a high bank. My son found a sturdy branch to which he tied a long, 2″-wide rope. Then he crawled to the top of the bank, holding the rope firmly an gave a bloodcurdling “Tarzan” yell, swinging form the top of the bank to a small island in the river where he landed. All the kids had a good time with the “Tarzan tree.” There weren’t so many park police or restrictions to keep kids from getting into mischief in the 30s to 60s, but I don’t recall any accidents occurring.
Thanks to Theodore Wirth and the Minneapolis Park Board for their foresight and wonderful planning of our great park system. There is so much for our enjoyment, and it’s free.
Judy Knutson
Webber Pool, year unknown. From the time it was built in 1910 until 1927, water was diverted form Shingle Creek to fill the pool. Beginning in 1927 the pool used filtered and chlorinated city water. In the early years, boys and girls used the pool at different times. One reason for the high wall around the pool was to prevent boys and girls from watching each other swim. In the 1930s, more than 1,500 children under the age of 14 used the pool every summer day. (City of Parks, Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board)
Minneapolis Park Memory: A Friend of Loring Park
Filed under: Minneapolis Park Memory | Tags: Loring Park, McRae Park, Minneapolis parks, Powderhorn Park, Theodore Wirth Park
Comments (1) After arriving in Minneapolis in September 1941, the first city park I became familiar with was Loring. I had come to enter nurse’s training at Eitel Hospital, and the park was right across the street. The park provided a beautiful view from patients’ rooms. It was also an oasis for student nurses, a place to relax in the summer or go skating on the lagoon in winter. Every nurse who has graduated from Eitel would have special memories of Loring Park.
The park looked different back in the forties. Old, tall trees grew along the edge of the lagoon. Now they are gone and tall grasses grow at the edge of the water. Bright red cannas blossomed in flower beds on the west side of the park. Now, “Friends of Loring” have created a large round garden on the northwest side called “Garden of the Seasons.” A variety of trees and flowers are in the center with benches and a brick path around it. Bricks can be donated in honor or memory of someone. A brick on the east side reads: “Eitel Hospital Nursing School — Class of 1944,” given in tribute to classmates, many of whom had served in the Army Nurse Corps in World War II.
In later years, my family and I enjoyed picnics at Minnehaha Park and viewing the beautiful Falls. Performances by the Aqua Follies at Theodore Wirth Park, and pop concerts at Lake Harriet on Sunday afternoons were great fun. My son as a teenager spent many winter evenings skating and playing hockey at McRae Park. On July 4th, we watched fireworks at Powderhorn Park. The park system provided something special for every season. My husband often said, “Minneapolis is the prettiest city I’ve ever seen.”
Ardelle Lande
Looking west across Loring Park from Eitel Hospital, 1375 Willow Street, in 1939. (Norton and Peel, Minnesota Historical Society, NP129145)
Editor’s note: For more photos of Eitel Hospital visit the Photo Collection of the Minnesota Historical Society.
If you have a Minneapolis Park Memory, send it to minneapolisparkhistory[at]q.com. If you have a digital photo to accompany your memory, we’d love to see it.
Minneapolis Park Memory: Phelps Field Fun
Filed under: Minneapolis Park Memory | Tags: Minneapolis parks, Phelps Field
Leave a Comment Living across the street from Phelps Field for fifty years, at 39th and Park Avenue, was sometimes both a joy and a curse. Cousins coming from out of town would always be eager to get to the park. If a baseball or basketball game was in progress, they would be eager to join in. The younger children loved the swings, slides, etc. But my paramount memory of Phelps Field was a basketball bouncing at one o’clock in the morning. I often wondered who the young man was. Did he not have a home to go to or would he rather be in the park than go home? I’ll never know. But to my way of thinking, he probably ended up playing in the NBA!
Jennie Aamodt
Phelps Field began life in 1917 as Chicago Avenue Field. The park was developed in 1924 (shown here). It was renamed Phelps Field in 1939. (Minnesota Historical Society, MH5.9 MP4.5 p8)
Minneapolis Park Memory: Spectacular Powderhorn
Filed under: Minneapolis Park Memory | Tags: Minneapolis parks, Powderhorn Park
Leave a Comment Powderhorn Park in south Minneapolis is a unique park with a large island in the middle of the lake. I lived about eight blocks from there, just the right distance for a walk. In the winter, my friend, Muriel, and I would tie the laces of our skates, carry them around our necks, and head for Powderhorn. It was a great place to skate around and around the island; we spent many days skating.
On Monday nights in the summer, we walked to the park to listen to the band concert (more important to us was to walk around and meet the boys). It was on one of those nights that I met my husband, and the first date I had with him was made there. That date never materialized, because I stepped on a bee while mowing the lawn and had to stay home. I’m not quite sure he really believed me, but we did get married a year or so later. Since he was in the service then and only able to get home a few times, we got married after only eleven dates.
July 4th was a big night at Powderhorn. All the families brought blankets and sat on the hills to watch the big fireworks display. The fireworks were lit on the island. One year there was a mishap; every one of the rockets went up at once. It made for a short, but spectacular event.
Fern Eidsvoog
Inspiration, Ideas and Ideals (Courtesy of William Watts Folwell)
Filed under: Minneapolis Parks: General | Tags: Folwell Park, Minneapolis parks, William Watts Folwell
Comments (1) Park history provides more than pretty pictures. Thanks to people such as William Folwell, it also gives us inspiring words. Such inspiration has perhaps never been needed more than now when political discourse is dominated by petty self-interest and shallow swagger.
“We owe it to our children and to all future dwellers in Minneapolis to plan on a great and generous scale. If we fail to accomplish, let them know it was not for lack of ideas or ideals.”
— William W. Folwell, President, Minneapolis Board of Park Commissioners, Eighteenth Annual Report, 1900
William W. Folwell attended the dedication of facilities at Folwell Park, July 4, 1925. He was 92. (Minnesota Historical Society, por 12574 r18)
David C. Smith
Powderhorn Park and Augsburg Stories Converge
Filed under: Minneapolis Parks: General, Powderhorn Park | Tags: Murphy Square, Powderhorn Park, Speed Skating
Leave a Comment A reader of recent posts on Murphy Square/Augsburg College and speed skating at Powderhorn Park put the two together and suggested a link to an article featuring U. S. Olympic speed skater Johnny Werket, who attended Augsburg. From the article we learn that a third Minneapolis park also played a role in the story: Longfellow Field was Werket’s home park.
Thanks for the tip.
David C. Smith
Minneapolis Park Memory: A Memorable Silence
Filed under: Minneapolis Park Memory, Minneapolis Parks: General | Tags: Bossen Field, Edward Foote Waite, Minneapolis parks, Minnehikers, Theodore Wirth, Waite Park
Comments (1) I was the editor of the Minneapolis Municipal Hiking Club’s monthly newsletter for many years, up through the last month of the club’s existence in October 2010.
One hike I particularly remember took place on Wednesday, September 12, 2001. The Club had an evening hike scheduled for the neighborhood around Bossen Field in south central Minneapolis. Many planes fly over this area approaching the airport, but this was the day after 9/11 and all U.S. civilian planes were grounded by federal decree. It was quite a sensation walking in this area, expecting to hear planes fly over, but hearing none.
George Bridgman
Minnehikers was a popular club. Annual banquet, 1938. (Norton and Peel, Minnesota Historical Society, GV1.22 p87)
Editor’s note: The Minnehikers, as the club was known, was originally organized by the park board’s recreation staff in 1920. According to Theodore Wirth (Minneapolis Park System 1883-1944), the first hike took place on January 10, 1920. Minneapolis Mayor J. E. Meyers, Judge Edward Foote Waite and Wirth led 83 hikers 3 1/2 miles from Minnehaha Falls to Riverside Park.
Twenty-nine years later, the park board named a park for the juvenile court judge who participated that day: Waite Park in northeast Minneapolis.
Waite Park and Waite Park School, the first joint school/park development in Minneapolis in 1949, were named for Judge Edward F. Waite, pictured here with students and teachers at the school in about 1955, when he was 95. (Newburg Studio, Minnesota Historical Society, por 5807 p8)
The mayor’s name is on a park too, the J.E. Meyers Memorial Park in Mound on Lake Minnetonka. Internet sites list it as both a boy’s camp and a cemetery. A mystery to be solved. Of course, we know that Wirth has a park named for him, too.
I would tell more about the Minnehikers, but I hope former members of the group will do that themselves with first person accounts. The club sponsored its last hike in October. Changing times.
David C. Smith
First shipment of merchandise by air lands in a Minneapolis park
Filed under: Minneapolis Airport, Minneapolis Parks: General | Tags: Minneapolis airport, Minneapolis parks, The Parade
Leave a Comment Another first for a Minneapolis park: The nation’s first commercial air shipment landed at The Parade near downtown Minneapolis on May 8, 1920.
This entry in the proceedings, or minutes, of the Minneapolis park board on May 5, 1920, had puzzled me from the time I first saw it a couple of years ago.
Petitions and Communications
From Dayton Company —
Requesting permission to have the two airplanes bringing freight from New York to overcome the embargo to land on The Parade Friday morning.
Commissioner Gross —
Moved that the request be granted under the supervision of the Superintendent of Parks.
Adopted
Only recently did I look up newspapers from the time to see if the event was mentioned. When I read the coverage in the Minneapolis Tribune, I knew I had seen a photo of the event somewhere and went straight to the Minnesota Historical Society’s Photo Collection, one of the most interesting places on the Internet. Sure enough, there were two photos of the event recorded by the superb photographer Charles Hibbard.
This is the story of a retail innovation by Dayton’s (now Target) and another small part in history played by Minneapolis parks.
In April 1920, a wildcat strike by railroad switchmen in Chicago eventually spread to railroads and rail yards throughout the country causing a near shutdown of national transportation. Even after the strike had ended goods had piled up around the country threatening food and fuel shortages in a kind of gridlock from New England to the Pacific Northwest. While the Interstate Commerce Commission, White House and Congress grappled with the problem and eventually reinstituted some World War I-era government controls on railroads, the department store of George Draper Dayton developed an innovative plan: it would ship goods from New York City to Minneapolis by airplane.
The Minneapolis Tribune announced Dayton’s intentions April 30, 1920 along with the news that two airplanes had already left the Curtiss airplane plant in Buffalo, New York bound for Roosevelt Field on Long Island. The planes would commence their journey west as soon as they were loaded. The Tribune also noted the interest in the flight by Minneapolis Postmaster E. A. Purdy, who asked the company to give him all particulars on the flight. United States airmail service from Chicago to Minneapolis was scheduled to begin two months later on July 1. And none too soon. The Minneapolis post office had just set a record on April 8: the first time it had handled 100,000 packages in one day.
Dear Target, Thank you. Yours Truly, FedEx and UPS
In the next day’s edition, the Tribune reported that the plan to fly merchandise to Minneapolis had attracted considerable attention. The New York American had carried a story of the flight by which a half-ton of goods was to be transported aboard two Curtiss Oriole airplanes. “The plan is described as a pioneer step in shipments of goods by plane,” the Tribune reported, “and is declared to bear the possibilities of an extensive development of the use of aircraft for freight-carrying purposes.”
On May 2 the Tribune ran photos of the two dapper pilots, Ray Miller and Charles Keyes, who had traveled to New York to pilot the planes back to Minneapolis. In this edition the Tribune claimed that the effort by Dayton’s had attracted the attention of both New York and Chicago retailers.
Perhaps the weather was not good or it took a long time to load 1,000 pounds of merchandise, but the planes didn’t depart New York until May 6. The May 7 Tribune reported that the pilots had flown through a blinding snowstorm over the Mohawk Valley before arriving in Buffalo the night before and were expected to arrive in Minneapolis the morning of May 8.
“Permission for the airplanes to land on The Parade grounds has been granted by the Board of Park Commissioners,” the Tribune reported. “The wings will be removed and the airplanes will be towed through the streets to Dayton’s store.”
And they were — as Charles Hibbard showed us.
While Target’s history website portrays the air shipment as a response to empty shelves in Dayton’s store, and it may have been, it was also a carefully constructed publicity campaign — from the daily press coverage, including photos of the pilots, to painting “Dayton’s Express” on the fusilages. The planes could have landed at the Speedway Airport, later Wold-Chamberlain Field, and the merchandise trucked to the store. Landing the planes in a park in the center of the city and then hauling them wingless into downtown for unloading made a good story that much better. Very clever.
Of course, in later years the park board became heavily involved in aviation. In 1927 the park board acquired the land of the fledgling Wold-Chamberlain Field in Bloomington and built it into a world-class airport. The park board turned the airport over to the Metropolitan Airports Commission in 1944, but retained title to about 600 acres of land at the center of the airport.
This was not George Dayton’s first encounter with the park board. When the Street Railway Company’s pavilion on park land beside Lake Harriet burned down in the spring of 1903, George Dayton was on a committee for the Retailers Association that worked with the park board and Street Railway to build a new pavilion. The Street Railway Company decided not to build a new pavilion itself but to contribute the $15,000 it collected in insurance on the burned building to the park board. The remaining $15,000 the park board needed to build a new pavilion? It was loaned to the park board on attractive terms by Dayton and the other retailers.
(See earlier post on the original plans for The Parade by Warren Manning.)
David C. Smith
© David C. Smith
A premier speed skating track in a Minneapolis park
Filed under: Powderhorn Park, Winter Sports | Tags: Gene Sandvig, John Werket, Ken Bartholomew, Minneapolis parks, Powderhorn Park, Speed Skating
Comments (15) A scrapbook of newspaper clippings about speed skating from 1953 to 1956 was recently given to Dave Garmany the recreation coordinator at Powderhorn Park in Minneapolis. The scrapbook features articles on the speed skating scene in Minneapolis, the U.S. and the world in those years and includes several articles from Norwegian newspapers.
In addition to the newspaper clips were several programs from international speed skating events at the Powderhorn Park speed skating track, such as this one in 1953.
A cropped version of the cover photo, showing a massive crowd at a 1930s event at Powderhorn Park—likely the national championships in 1934, which were reportedly attended by 50,000 in two days—is in the collection of the Minnesota Historical Society.
Most of the clips in the scrapbook were about the rivalry between Minneapolis skaters Ken Bartholomew and Gene Sandvig. Bartholomew won 14 National Outdoor Championships from 1939-1960. Sandvig was often runner-up in the 1950s after he had gotten out of the Army and enrolled at Gustavus Adolphus College. Bartholomew was a silver medalist for the U.S. in the Winter Olympics at St. Moritz in 1948. Sandvig skated for the U. S. in the 1952 Winter Games in Oslo and the 1956 Games at Cortina d’Ampezzo.
The skater featured in Planert’s ad, Leo Friesinger, was the bronze medalist for the U.S. in the 500 meters at the 1936 Olympics in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany. Friesinger was from Chicago, which was also home to Planert.
Among other bits of info that caught my eye in news clips from Minneapolis Star and Minneapolis Tribune.
- Minneapolis high school athletic director Giffy O’Dell hopes to bring back speed skating as a regular sport in the Minneapolis high school sports program. January, 1954. (I never knew it ever had been part of that program.)
- Top Minneapolis skaters Ken Bartholomew and Gene Sandvig will not be challenged locally by two other elite Minneapolis skaters. Pat McNamara will return to Norway or will train in Japan. Johnny Werket is considering spending the winter in Japan. January, 1954.
- Werket and McNamara have created a new practice track early in the season on Augusta Lake in Mendota. They do not train at Powderhorn Lake. They prefer the European style of speed skating used in the Olympics. The European track is 400 meters compared to the standard American track (including the Powderhorn track) of 293 yards, four laps to a mile instead of six. Also in European skating all competitors race against the clock instead of against other skaters in a pack. (American-style speed skating at the time was in between the long-track and short-track skating in today’s Olympics. The Winter Olympics tried the North American pack-style of speed skating at the 1932 games in Lake Placid, New York. Canada and the U.S. won 10 of 12 medals skating that way. The 1936 games in Germany reverted to European-style racing against the clock — and Norway and Finland won 10 of the 12 medals. Pack speed skating returned to the Olympics as a separate demonstration sport, short track skating, in 1988 at Calgary and became a regular Olympic event in 1992 at Albertville.)
- Ken Bartholomew was a 14-time U.S. champion, but he skated for the U.S. Olympic team only once, winning a silver medal in 1948 at St. Moritz. He did not make the Olympic team again despite dominating the National Outdoor Championships for years. Werket was on the U. S. Olympic team in 1948, 1952 and 1956. McNamara skated in the Olympics for the U.S. in 1952 and 1956. Their greater success in making Olympic teams may have been partially due to training in the Olympic style of racing—although Gene Sandvig also made the Olympic team in 1952 and 1956. All three were also much younger than Bartholomew. A commentary in the Minneapolis Tribune after the Winter Games in Cortina d’Ampezzo in 1956 had this to say about the different styles: “The U.S. should adopt the Olympic system of competition—that is, a competition against time. True, it’s pretty dull for young Americans, as well as the few spectators who turn out. They (presumably young Americans and spectators) love the free-for-all scramble with all of its pushing, tugging, elbowing and the like such as popped up in the Nationals at Como over the weekend.” (The reference was to the races at Lake Como in St. Paul won by Bartholomew, in which Bartholomew and another skater got into a fight after the other accused Bartholomew of knocking him down. Bartholomew was obviously a racer, a strategist, not a time-trial expert that the Olympic style required. In other words, he was more Apolo Anton Ohno than Shani Davis, Eric Heiden or Dan Jansen.)
- One reason the Tribune advocated changing American racing to the Olympic style: the Russians had started to dominate international speed skating. It had begun with a surprise victory by the Russians at the world championships in Sapporo, Japan in 1954. The U.S. had failed to send a team. The U.S. State Department had declined to pay the travel costs of John Werket, Pat McNamara and a third skater from Chicago, Ken Henry, who was an Olympic gold medalist in 1952. The State Department determined that the request for funds was “not meritorious.” (Tribune, January 31, 1954) The Russian victory elicited this comment on the sports page: “The time is at hand when the athletic leaders of the free world had better take Russia’s bid for international supremacy seriously. The Commies proved in the last Olympic Games they have made greater strides in track and field than any other nation in the world. Over the week-end Russia did the unexpected by winning the world’s speed skating championships rather decisively, beating the best Norway and some other Scandinavian countries have to offer.” Russian dominance had grown at the 1956 Winter Games.
- The 1955 world championships were held in Moscow and Johnny Werket was one of three skaters to represent the U.S. after friends raised $700 to pay his expenses. Those three skaters were the first American athletes to compete in Russia after World War II, according to a February, 1955 Tribune article. Werket had high praise for the Russians. “Russians were tops,” said Werket, “as athletes, as hosts and as fans. It would be hard to find a fairer audience anywhere in the world.”
- Nearly all Minneapolis speed skating teams in the 1950s were sponsored by American Legion posts. Wenell, Laidlaw, Bearcat and Falldin posts all sponsored teams.
Finally this item from the annual program of the Minnesota Speed Skating Association, 1955-1956:
Missing Skater News
- Tom Miller and Colleen Burke (Falldin American Legion Post team) married last June, Tom in U. S. Army, stationed in California
- Gene Sandvig (Bearcat) on Olympic Team
- Tom Hadley (Wenell) concentrating on studies, U of M on Evans Scholarship (Based on scholarship and golf proficiency)
- Janet Koch (Laidlaw) is now Mrs. Vasatka
- David Kahn (Wenell) out with knee injury suffered in football at Roosevelt Hi
- Dennis Boike (Laidlaw) at Nazareth Hall Prep Seminary studying for priesthood
- Tom Romfo (Wenell) recuperating from a bout with polio
For some reason, perhaps the mention of polio, the list seemed so 1950s. Poignant, too.
David C. Smith
© David C. Smith
Minneapolis Park History 