BIG RIVER MAGAZINE
It begins at Gray’s Bay. For a while it was known as Brown’s Creek. But Indian traders, soldiers, settlers, loggers, millers, developers, stream straighteners, flood managers, bridge builders, park visionaries and, as ever, canoeists have all contributed much more color than that to Minnehaha Creek.
Today it’s a centerpiece in the Twin Cities metro area, defining urban and suburban neighborhoods, nourishing real estate values, providing inspiration and retreat to residents from Minnetonka to south Minneapolis, before it tumbles over a cliff and flows into the Mississippi. Each year it thrills about 800,000 visitors to Minnehaha Falls, the 53-foot cataract watched over by bronze versions of the tragic young lovers, Hiawatha and Minnehaha, from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s epic poem, “The Song of Hiawatha.” Nearby, a bust of the Dakota Chief Little Crow also stands by. (The Longfellow poem actually takes place along Lake Superior more than 400 miles away – a small bit of poetic, geographic and cultural license.) The creek itself is where kids shout and splash as they drop off rope swings dangling from trees along its shady and sometimes steep banks. It’s where landscape painters and joggers find challenges and rewards. It’s where dogwalkers and their dogs find joy and relief.
Yet it’s still just a creek … usually easy to walk across without getting swept away. In winter, it often freezes solid. That’s one reason there are few fish in it, though that also gives walkers, snowshoers, skaters and sometimes bicyclists an ephemeral path through the city. Late architect and artist Victor C. Gilbertson, who published a delightful book of watercolors of all 101 bridges across the creek in 2002, described it as a “meandering magnet.”
By Bill McAuliffe
Article available here. Read the full issue with a subscription to Big River Magazine