Lake Minnetonka - Discovery & Early History

Discovery & Early History

The first known people of European descent to have visited the Lake were two seventeen-year-old boys named Joe Brown and Will Snelling, who canoed up Minnehaha Creek from Fort St. Anthony (later renamed Fort Snelling) in 1822. For the following three decades, few others visited the Lake or even knew it existed.

Lake Minnetonka was given its name by Minnesota's territorial governor, Alexander Ramsey, in 1852. He had been informed that American Indians in the area used a phrase sounding like Minn-ni-tanka, meaning “Big Water,” to refer to the Lake. That same year, the first settlements were established along its shores and, in 1853, the first hotel was constructed.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote an epic poem, The Song of Hiawatha, in 1855, which referred to Minnesota and landmarks of the area such as Minnehaha Falls. This gained the area national and international interest.

1861 saw the introduction of steamboats on Lake Minnetonka, the first of which being the Governor Ramsey, a small side-wheel steamer named in honor of the man who gave the Lake its name. Following the Civil War, a rail line operated by the St. Paul & Pacific Co. was extended to the area in 1867, running through the town of Wayzata.