Eden Prairie, Minnesota
Eden Prairie, Minnesota
Main page
2281961

Eden Prairie, Minnesota

logo
Community Hub0 subscribers
What are your thoughts?
Be the first to start a discussion here.
Be the first to start a discussion here.
Eden Prairie, Minnesota

Eden Prairie is a city in Hennepin County, Minnesota, United States. It had a population of 64,198 at the 2020 census, making it the 16th-largest city in Minnesota. The city is adjacent to the north bank of the Minnesota River, upstream from its confluence with the Mississippi River, about 12 miles (19 km) southwest of downtown Minneapolis.

Set in the Twin Cities' outer suburbs, the community was designed as a mixed-income city model and is home to numerous commercial firms, including the headquarters of SuperValu, C.H. Robinson Worldwide, Winnebago Industries, Starkey Hearing Technologies, Lifetouch Inc., SABIS, and MTS Systems Corporation. It contains the Eden Prairie Center mall and is the hub of SouthWest Transit, providing public transportation to three adjacent suburbs. The television stations KMSP and WFTC are based in Eden Prairie. The nonprofit news organization Eden Prairie Local News (EPLN) also serves the community.

The area features numerous municipal and regional parks, conservation areas, multi-purpose trails, and recreational facilities. There are more than 170 miles (270 km) of multi-use trails, 2,250 acres (9 km2) of parks, and 1,300 acres (5 km2) of open space. Popular recreational areas include Staring Lake, Lake Riley, Purgatory Creek, Miller Park, Round Lake, and the Minnesota River Bluffs Regional Trail.

Native Americans were the first to live in the area. Originally, the land was part of the Great Dakota Nation, but when the Ojibwe arrived from the Great Lakes region, the tribes began to clash over the land. The Ojibwe were armed with knives and guns traded to them by white settlers and fur traders, and after years of bloody warfare the Ojibwe had forced the Dakota to give up all their land east of the Mississippi River, and north of the Crow Wing River, land that did not include what is now Eden Prairie.

On May 25, 1858, a battle was fought between the Dakota and the Ojibwe in the southern part of Eden Prairie, just north of the Minnesota River, an area known as Murphy's Ferry. The Ojibwe wished to "avenge the murder" of one of their people by the Dakota the previous fall. The Ojibwe had 200 warriors and the Dakota somewhere between 60 and 70, but the Dakota proved victorious, wounding the young Ojibwe chief. The tribes continued to fight over territory well into the 1860s, even after the "Sioux Uprising" of 1862, when most Dakota people were removed from Minnesota.

Among the notable Native Americans who lived in the Eden Prairie area was Chief Shoto. Born into the band of Chief Wabash, he went on to be the chief of the Red Wing Dakota tribe for 15 years, leaving them and becoming Chief of the "Little Six" band of Dakota until the uprising in 1862, during which he became a scout for then Governor Sibley from 1862 to 1870, returning to the Little Six band in 1872. He died in 1899 at age 99 at his home in Eden Prairie.

In 1851, a treaty opened land west of the Mississippi River to settlement allowing pioneers to settle in what is now Eden Prairie. Many early farmhouses remain in the town and can be found on the National Register of Historic Places. One of these early settlers was John Cummins, an Irish-born immigrant who built what is now known as the "Cummins-Phipps-Grill House" with his wife Mattie in 1880. Manuscripts indicate that Cummins was an avid and respected horticulturist, scientist, and farmer; he used his farmland to experiment with different strains of apples and grapes to try to find one that could withstand the harsh climate in Minnesota. The Cummins family sold this property to the Phipps family in 1908.

In 1853, John H. McKenzie and Minnesota Territory secretary Alexander Wilkins platted the town of Hennepin along the Minnesota River in what is now southeastern Eden Prairie. According to area historian Helen Holden Anderson, topographic disadvantages for the transport of agricultural goods caused Hennepin to be eclipsed by other towns in the region and the town soon vanished from maps.

See all
User Avatar
No comments yet.