Lake Minnetonka - Glory Years

Glory Years

The first inland steamboat ever to be equipped with electric lights, the City of St. Louis, was built in Wayzata in 1881 and began servicing lakeshore communities and resorts later that year. In the following year of 1882, the largest vessel ever to operate on Lake Minnetonka was launched and began similar service; the Belle of Minnetonka was 300 feet (91.44 m) long and could carry 2500 passengers.

The 1880s also saw the rise of grand hotels on Lake Minnetonka, the first of which was the Hotel St. Louis in Deephaven, Minnesota. The Lake Park Hotel in Tonka Bay, Minnesota and the largest hotel ever built on the shores of Lake Minnetonka, the Hotel Lafayette in Minnetonka Beach, Minnesota, soon followed. Affluent visitors from around the world, but particularly from the Deep South, came to spend summer-long vacations on the Lake for its beauty and temperate climate.

As the railroad expanded westward throughout the 1890s, many of Lake Minnetonka's visitors began finding new places to spend their summers, such as Glacier National Park and Yellowstone National Park, as well as North America's West Coast. This caused most of the hotels and steamboats on Lake Minnetonka to cease operations. During this same period of time, however, an increasing number of families began to own private summer cottages and permanent homes in the Lake's vicinity as the metropolitan area of Minneapolis–St. Paul expanded outward.