Minnehaha Regional Park Long Range Plan Update A comprehensive update to the 1992 Minnehaha Regional Park long-range plan. Project activities will include community engagement, research, design, and public board review.

Milestones (anticipated project schedule by month/season)

The process for developing an updated long-range plan for Minnehaha Regional Park will begin in 2026 and will involve the seating of a 17-member community advisory committee (CAC). An application for the CAC is not yet open but if you’d like to be notified when it is please subscribe to the mailing list by submitting your email on the project page. You can also learn more about the plan and project in general as well as future related events by subscribing.

Background

In 1885 the Minnesota legislature passed a bill that authorized the creation of a park at Minnehaha Falls. The commission was headed by the president of the Minneapolis park board, Charles Loring. The commission selected 123 acres around the falls and along Minnehaha Creek to the Mississippi River.

Minnehaha Falls and the land surrounding it became one of the first state parks in the United States when it was purchased by the state of Minnesota in 1889. Only New York had created a state park at that time. But the state of Minnesota only paid for the park indirectly and never had a hand in maintaining it. The city of Minneapolis put up the money to buy it and managed it from the beginning. The park was officially named Minnehaha State Park when it was first purchased.

The park board officially accepted title to the land from the state of Minnesota on June 15, 1889. The name Minnehaha comes from words in the Dakota language that mean waterfall. The popular translation of “laughing waters” comes from a felicitous, but too literal Anglophone translation of “ha-ha”.

In 1892 the park board built its first pavilion/shelter in the park near the falls and also installed electric lights in the park. Improvements continued in 1894 with the construction of a parapet wall north of the falls to protect spectators. A refectory for concessions was built near the falls in 1903, burned down, and was replaced in 1905. In 1904 the Park Board purchased two additional blocks of land west of the park to Hiawatha Avenue for $6,800.

In 1906 it was officially designated as a part of Mississippi Park, which included the parkways on both sides of the river and Riverside Park.

Major improvements were made in the park from 1932 to 1940 by federal work relief crews. With the aid of federal money, stairs were built into the lower glen, as well as retaining walls along the banks of the creek and new bridges over it.

The park was expanded for the first time in decades in 1958 when the park board acquired 26 acres of land from the federal government that had been a part of Fort Snelling to the south of the park. Four years later the park board acquired additional land on the bluff adjacent to the Wabun picnic area.

In 1995, a new garden, the Pergola Garden, featuring native wildflowers and grasses, was created overlooking the falls from the south.

In 2014 the Wabun Universal Access Play Area opened at Minnehaha Park. It was the first universally accessible play area built in Minneapolis. In 2015 a number of improvements to the refectory and area surrounding it were completed.

(History through 2008 excerpted from writing by David C. Smith, with updates from 2009 to present written by MPRB. For a more detailed history, visit the Minnehaha Regional Park webpage at https://www.minneapolisparks.org/parks-destinations/parks-lakes/minnehaha_regional_park)

Funding

This long-range plan project funded with $550,000 of Parks & Trails funds, as outlined in the 2026 adopted Capitol Improvement Program.