page_title: Lake Minnetonka
section_title: Early history
hierarchical_section_title: Lake Minnetonka / History / Early history
context_page_description: Lake Minnetonka is an inland lake located approximately 15 miles west-southwest of Minneapolis, Minnesota. The lake lies within Hennepin and Carver counties and is surrounded by 13 municipalities. At 14,528 acres, it is Minnesota's ninth largest lake and is popular among boaters, sailors, and fishermen. It is also one of Minnesota's most affluent residential areas.
context_section_description: The first people who inhabited the Lake Minnetonka area were indigenous natives who migrated to the region at the end of the last ice age circa 8000 BCE. Later peoples who inhabited the area between 3500 BCE and 1500 CE are commonly referred to collectively as the "Mound Builders" because they constructed large land features serving spiritual, ceremonial, burial, and elite residential functions. The Mound Builder culture reached its apex circa 1150 CE and ceased to exist circa 1500 CE.
  By the 1700s Lake Minnetonka was inhabited by the Mdewakanton people, a subtribe of the Dakota Nation. Although their primary settlements lay within the Minnesota River Valley, the Mdewakanton frequented Lake Minnetonka to hunt, fish, and harvest wild rice and maple sap. Spirit Knob, a peninsula near present-day Wayzata, held spiritual significance for the Mdewakanton. Following the Dakota War of 1862, however, the Dakota were banished from Minnesota and forced to leave the area.
  The first Euro-Americans known to have visited Lake Minnetonka were two teenage boys, Joe Brown and Will Snelling, who canoed up Minnehaha Creek from Fort Saint Anthony in 1822. However, few other Euro-Americans visited the lake or even knew of its existence for three subsequent decades .
  Lake Minnetonka was officially named by Minnesota's territorial governor, Alexander Ramsey, in 1852. He had been informed that the Dakota used the phrase Minn-ni-tanka (“Big Water” in the Dakota language) to refer to the lake. Excelsior, the lake's first white settlement, was established the following year. The first steamboat on Lake Minnetonka, a small side-wheel steamer named the Governor Ramsey, was launched in 1861. Travel to Lake Minnetonka remained relatively difficult, however, until the Saint Paul and Pacific Railroad extended a line to Wayzata in 1867.
  Peter Gideon, an early Minnesota horticulturist, moved to the Lake Minnetonka area in 1853. In 1868 he successfully bred a species of apple that could withstand Minnesota's harsh winters and named it the "Wealthy" in honor of his wife. This breakthrough made possible the later developments of the Haralson and Honeycrisp apples in 1913 and 1974, respectively.
caption: Stereoscope of recreational activity near Spirit Knob circa 1875
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