Minneapolis Park History

Just in time for the history buff on your gift list comes a big book: The History of Big Island, Lake Minnetonka. While the book is richly illustrated with historical photos and drawings, it is much more than a coffee-table book. It appears to be a labor of love by author Paul Maravelas: exhaustively researched, carefully written, and extensively footnoted.

Maravelas covers the entire recorded history of the island–and the lake–drawing from archaeological records, oral histories, journals, letters, newspapers, and official records. He takes the reader through the many purposes the island has served from maple sugar production and wild rice harvesting to farming to amusement park and campsite.

I especially appreciated chapters on what we know of the Dakota use of the island and, years later, the creation of an amusement park on the island and the role played by the streetcar line from Minneapolis. Of course, many of the names that fill accounts of Minneapolis park history pop up in the history of settlement and development at Lake Minnetonka and Big Island, too. As the source of Minnehaha Creek, Lake Minnetonka will always be off interest to many Minneapolitans, although the watershed isn’t the book’s focus.

I would expect everyone who lives at or near the lake would want this book in their library along with all of us city dwellers who appreciate local history and enjoy a good story.

The book is available from Minnetonka Press. Free shipping via USPS media mail is offered on the publisher’s website this month, which is a significant value as the book runs 470 pages and weighs 4 1/2 pounds. As I said: Big Island, Big Book.

David C. Smith