Longfellow History Bike Tour
On Saturday morning we went on a bike tour of Longfellow, visiting the locations of past historical places, as well as some that are still around. This tour was basically just along the western side of Longfellow, as the guide has done other walking tours of Lake and Minnehaha as well as the River Rd.
The tour met at a bank parking lot on Lake and 27th Ave, where, because of the large crowd, it was decided that we’d split up into two groups. I think they were expecting 20 or so, but they ended up with over 50 riders. It was very cool to see so many people out for the tour, and hopefully this will convince them to do more bike tours in the future.
Our guide was Eric Hart, who I think said he was working on a book on the history of Longfellow, and did a wonderful job, though was a little hard to hear at times because of the large group. Eric also put together a nice booklet that went into more detail of the tour that we could buy for $5 at the end. I was glad to support him and the booklet is a nice thing to have, though I’m really looking forward to the book.
Stops Included:
- Longfellow Community School, built in 1918 using the California Plan of design, which emphasized outdoor access and light and air to each classroom. Enrollment at this school peaked at 1000 students in the 1920’s, 716 in 1962, and now holds around 340 students after surviving Minneapolis school closings a few years ago.
- Wonderland Amusement Park on 31st Ave, a summer attraction that was open between 1905 and 1911. The park also had the Infant Incubator - a Scientific Exhibit of the Modern Method of Saving the Lives of Prematurely Born Infants - on 31st and 31st.
- Longfellow also had a horsetrack, the Minnehaha Driving Park, that once also contained a baseball park for the Minneapolis Millers so they could play there on Sundays. Since Longfellow was way out in the farmland, they could escape the laws that said baseball couldn’t be played on a Sunday.
- Danish immigrants set up dairy farms in the area, holding up to 120 cows over 3 different, but adjoining farms. One barn still exists, at 3320 31st St, though it has changed over the years.
- Everyone in Mpls has seen the grain elevators along Hiawatha Ave between 35th and 39th St., most of which are still operational. The oldest remaining elevator was built in 1908, but all of the current elevators were in place by 1930. The Purina Mills site on 38th and Hiawatha was bought by a developer and there are plans in place for retail and housing.
- 36th St and Snelling was home to a large black population in the first half of the century, one of the very few in the city at that time. This was a very odd part of the tour. Eric tried so hard to sound PC, but it just didn’t sound right. TPT has an excellent documentary on the subject called, Northstar: Minnesota’s Black Pioneers, that I’d highly recommend watching.
- And no tour of Longfellow would be complete without a stop at Minnehaha Falls and the Longfellow house. Minnehaha Falls was once called Little Falls, and it and St. Anthony Falls, are two of the cities oldest tourist destinations. The Longfellow House at Minnehaha Falls park is a 2/3 replica of Longfellow’s actual home in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
The whole story of the Longfellow name is quite interesting, though I don’t know the complete timeline of it all. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote the poem “The Song of Hiawatha” in 1855, based on Finnish legends, as he never actually visited the site. Schools, parks and neighborhoods were all named after him though because of that poem.
First came the school and the park, but it wasn’t until 1990 that the Minneapolis neighborhood between the Mississippi River to the east and Hiawatha to the west, Minnehaha Park to the south and the railroad tracks on 27th St to the north, was named Longfellow.