The first environmental legislation in Minneapolis?
Filed under: Lake Calhoun | Tags: Clean Water Legislation, Lake Calhoun, Lake Minnetonka
Leave a Comment Minneapolis has acquired parks in less time than it’s taken me to start this blog. No joke. I was planning to get this blog going well before the park board considered acquiring the Scherer Brothers site along the Mississippi River in Northeast. Now that acquisition is completed. Brilliant, by the way. A no-brainer. Above the Falls will someday be as spectacular as Below the Falls. Different, but spectacular — nearly 100 years after the first suggestions that the park board acquire the banks of the Mississippi above St. Anthony Falls. It’s happening bit by bit. As in the early days. It took the park board several attempts and nearly twenty years after its creation to acquire the river banks below the falls. The goal then was to preserve land for public use, to prevent it from being destroyed. Now it is to reclaim it.
Which brings me to an interesting bit of information on early preservation and environmental protection efforts in Minneapolis. On February 26, 1879, four years and one day before the Minnesota legislature created a Board of Park Commissioners for Minneapolis it passed Chapter 339 of the Special Laws of Minnesota, entitled “An Act To Preserve The Purity Of Certain Lakes In Hennepin Country By Prohibiting The Discharge Or Deposit Of Impure Or Deleterious Matter Into The Waters Thereof.”
The law declared it unlawful for any person to “deposit, place or empty” into the waters of Lake Calhoun or Lake Minnetonka any “putrid or decayed animal or vegetable matter, or impure liquid, or to erect any building, stable or outhouse on the bank or shore of either of said lakes, from which any deleterious deposit or matter may fall into or reach the waters of either of said lakes, or to discharge or drain into either of said lakes any impure liquid or substance whatever which shall defile the waters thereof and render the same impure for drinking or household use or in any wise deleterious to health.”
Was this the first “clean water” legislation in Minnesota?
In a later post I’ll provide one good reason why Lake Calhoun was singled out in Minneapolis. And, yes, it does have something to do with railroads.
David C. Smith
Did the Princess Depot burn down?
Filed under: Minnehaha Falls | Tags: Minnehaha Falls, Princess Depot
Comments (5) Most visitors to Minnehaha Falls have seen the little railroad depot, the “Princess” depot, that sits along the railroad tracks southwest of the falls. It was once owned by the Milwaukee Road but is now owned by the Minnesota Historical Society and operated by the Minnesota Transportation Museum. The little information available about the depot says that it was built in 1875. However last year while helping my daughter research a school paper we came across an article in the Minneapolis Tribune of March 7, 1891 that read in its entirety:
The Minnehaha Depot Burned
Shortly after 10 o’clock last night the Milwaukee depot at Minnehaha Falls took fire. Before the apparatus of the fire department could reach the place the flames had obtained too much of a start to be put out and the building, which was built of wood, was totally destroyed. It was a small structure, probably worth less than $1,000.
Subsequent searches of the newspaper revealed no more information on the fire or when the depot was rebuilt. Was the Princess Depot the one that burned or was there another Milwaukee depot at Minnehaha?
Not exactly a Minneapolis parks issue, but many visitors to the falls likely passed through that station.
David C. Smith
Minneapolis Park History 