The Big Island Game Farm brought Minnesota its most iconic game bird, the ring-necked pheasant.
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Then & Now
Read the lesser known history of one of Lake Minnetonka's most prominent landmarks.
David Bell laid the cornerstone for Excelsior Academy and played a key role in several early Minneapolis institutions.
The ice harvest was an important time on Lake Minnetonka in the early 1900s.
Trinity Episcopal Church has a complicated and dramatic history.
Ice boating came to Lake Minnetonka in the 1880s, and is still popular to this day.
The motto for the trail was “A Good Road from Plymouth Rock to Puget Sound.”
In 1901, Dr. George LaPaul had a stern-wheel steamboat built bearing his name at a cost of $10,000.
The George launched from the Excelsior docks with a large crowd of over 1,000 spectators. The boat held 800 passengers and was the largest boat on Lake Minnetonka at the time.
Built in 1893 by “Minnetonka’s Boat Builder” Arthur Dyer for Hazen and Ward Burton, the boat was conceived with the idea that greater speed could be attained by sailing over the water, rather than through it.
The history of the business also serves as a family history.
With all the transformations to downtown Wayzata, one place has remained the same: the Wayzata Depot and the trains rumbling along the shore of the lake.
