Minnehaha Park is a pretty sliver of parkland, tucked up tight between two rivers in the centre of Minneapolis. It owes its fame to a small, but spectacular, waterfall, which tumbles 15 metres down a limestone cliff just before the Minnehaha Creek spills into the broad Mississippi River. Pretty though it is, the reason so many visitors are attracted to this sheltered spot in the heart of the city is a poem – the “Song of Hiawatha”, the famous 19th-century work of Henry Longfellow. He named the beautiful heroine of this epic poem after the Minnehaha Waterfall, after seeing it in a photo.
When the poem became a national sensation in the 1850s, anything connected with Hiawatha and Minnehaha became popular, and visitors began arriving here to see its tumbling splendour. Ironically, the legendary figures introduced in the “Song of Hiawatha” were taken from the tales of Indians much further east, and there's no actual connection to the park. That hasn't stopped a statue to Hiawatha and Minnehaha being erected here, though. There's also a statue of Little Crow, a more locally relevant Indian figure and an important chief of the Dakota tribe.
There are other statues to local notables, and some historic houses from the 19th-century, which have been moved or reconstructed here. But the star remains the waterfall, which becomes a gushing white torrent after it has rained, and which looks especially magnificent in the winter. In the exceptionally cold winters of Minnesota, it invariably freezes into a curtain of twisting icicles.
Above the waterfall, the park is landscaped, with many easy paths. A bandstand here is often occupied by local musicians in the summer. Below it, the creek valley has been allowed to grow wild. Here, you'll find groves of oak and elm, basswood and hackberry, and even cottonwood trees. The stream also has many pools and quiet coves, and you might be lucky enough to spot wild turtles. It's all a far cry from the hubbub of the Twin Cities. No wonder Henry Longfellow let his imagination run wild when writing that epic Indian poem.
