Where to Stay in Minnetonka, Minnesota

What is Minnetonka known for?

Forest and wetland give Minnetonka a setting unlike the other suburbs west of Minneapolis, and the Wings of the North Air Museum, the Braemar Ice Rink and Excelsior Amusement Park sit on the same short roster of places people name. Wooddale Church is on it as well. Older ground survives too, in the Heck House and the Wyer House.

What are the main landmarks in Minnetonka?

Thirteen names carry the record. Farmhouses lead it: the John R. Cummins Farmhouse and the Peter Gideon Farmhouse, joined by the Charles H. Burwell House, the Heck House, the Wyer House and the Thompson Summer House among the older domestic buildings. Churches follow.

Minnetonka's Catholic church of St. Hubertus-Catholic and Wooddale Church stand for the congregations, while Braemar Ice Rink, the Wings of the North Air Museum, Excelsior Amusement Park, the Glen Lake Children's Camp and the Shakopee Historic District cover everything else.

What is the history of Minnetonka?

Settlement dates from 1852. The John R. Cummins Farmhouse and the Peter Gideon Farmhouse survive from the farming years of this part of Hennepin County, and the Charles H. Burwell House and the Wyer House stand for the households of the same period. Woods and water surrounded them.

Nothing in the record points to a platted downtown, which is why the oldest Minnetonka reads as scattered holdings rather than as a town with a main street. Leisure left the next layer. Excelsior Amusement Park, the Glen Lake Children's Camp and the Thompson Summer House all read as seasonal ground, the kind of place the Twin Cities used when the lakes west of Minneapolis were a summer destination.

Churches followed the families. Minnetonka's Catholic church of St. Hubertus-Catholic and Wooddale Church mark the settled decades, and the Heck House belongs to the same domestic record. Suburbia closed the sequence.

Hennepin County built outward until the farm parcels became a city of the Twin Cities, and Braemar Ice Rink, the Wings of the North Air Museum and the Shakopee Historic District come from that later Minnetonka. Growth did not erase what came before, and the thirteen names on the landmark list run from the farming decades straight through to the rinks and museums of the suburb.

Where is Minnetonka?

Water and woodland take up much of the ground. Minnetonka covers about 75 square kilometres of Hennepin County, where wetland and prairie sit between the lakes and the built streets, which gives the city a setting the neighbouring suburbs of the Twin Cities do not share. Minneapolis lies about ten miles away.

The Glen Lake Children's Camp and the Shakopee Historic District stand within that spread, far enough apart that no single walk covers the city.

What is the climate of Minnetonka?

The lakes do little to soften it. Minnetonka lies in the temperate band of the North American interior, far from any sea, so the Twin Cities swing hard between a warm half of the year and a cold one that keeps the wetlands and woods locked for months. Braemar Ice Rink fits that.

Hennepin County records the same conditions across every suburb, and nothing about the ground here alters them.

How do you get to Minnetonka?

Ten miles of road is the whole journey. Minneapolis sits that far off, and the practical approach to Minnetonka is out of the Twin Cities and into Hennepin County, since the record names no railway station or terminal inside the city. Distances here are driving distances.

The Wings of the North Air Museum, Braemar Ice Rink and the Glen Lake Children's Camp all sit apart from one another, so a car does the work between them.