Minnehaha Creek & Parkway

The family house on Stevens Avenue was only about a block and a half from Minnehaha Creek. We loved taking family walks and riding bikes on the wonderful trails. I remember the paved walking and bikes paths were put in in the early to mid-1970s. We sure took advantage of them. Before the paved bike paths the city would close off the parkway from cars on summer Sunday afternoons so people could ride bikes. I remember doing that too. As a kid I remember searching for crayfish at the creek in the summer and walking in the dried out creek bed in the fall. As a teenager I loved taking my bike on the Minnehaha bike paths all the way to Lake Harriet, Lake Calhoun, Lake of the Isles, and sometimes even Cedar Lake and riding around them. As a college student I would drive Minnehaha Parkway to St. Paul where I attended the College (now University) of St. Thomas. As an adult I trained for the Twin Cities to Chicago AIDS Ride using the paths on Minnehaha Parkway and the lakes and now drive the parkway to work.

The following is from Wikipedia:

"Minnehaha Creek is a tributary of the Mississippi River located in Hennepin County, Minnesota that extends from Lake Minnetonka in the west and flows east for 22 miles through several suburbs west of Minneapolis and then through south Minneapolis. Including Lake Minnetonka, the watershed for the creek covers 181 square miles. The creek might have been unremarkable except for the 53 foot Minnehaha Falls located near the creek's confluence with the Mississippi. The site is not far from Fort Snelling, one of the earliest white settlements in the region."

"While the name is often translated as 'Laughing Water', the correct translation is 'curling water' or 'waterfall'. The name comes from the Dakota language elements mni, meaning water, and haha, meaning waterfall. The Dakota called Minnehaha Creek, 'Wakpa Cistinna', meaning 'Little River'."