Hennepin County Library

Genesis of Hennepin Avenue (photo from 1869)

Did you know that Hennepin Avenue started as a American Indian footpath and was later a territorial road?  Did you know the man who platted Minneapolis regretted aligning the streets with the Mississippi river and would have rather put them on a strict north-south grid?

Here are some snippets from various historical resources located in Special Collections:

“From the west end of the [Hennepin Avenue] bridge the old territorial road took a westerly course over the bluffs and across the intervening prairie to the narrow passage between lakes Calhoun and Isles and Cedar, and thence to Eden Prairie and Bloomington.  This was adapted as the line of Hennepin Avenue.” Page 414, History of Minneapolis, Isaac Atwater, 1893.

Here is what John Stevens says about the platting of Minneapolis in 1854, “As no one expected at that time that much of the land back of the first plateau would ever be used for any other than agricultural purposes…we concluded there should be one avenue laid out running parallel with the river, which should be the basis for laying out the town; that the name of this avenue should be Washington. This decision with regard to laying out the principal avenue in such a manner as to run parallel with the river as the foundation for laying out all the other land into streets, avenues, lots and blocks was a great error, an error that, had my foresight been as good as my present sight, would have never occurred. What I should have done, was to paid no attention to the windings of the river, but ran the streets directly east and west and the avenues north and south. As all the land subsequently laid out and platting in Minneapolis had for a starting point my first survey, it made me responsible for all time for this unfortunate early mistake….The only city I had lived in previous to coming to Minnesota, was New Orleans, and I admired the English part so much more than the old French portion of it, that I decided to follow, as far as practicable, the former in laying out and platting Minneapolis proper….No one ever supposed at that time that Minneapolis would expand into a city of more than fifty or sixty thousand inhabitants, and many looked upon my platting the streets and avenues so wide as a great waste of land; and on some accounts I am rather inclined to think it would have been preferable to have reduced the width of the avenues and streets about twenty feet; especially when we take into account the great cost of paving…” This is from Personal Recollections of Minnesota and Its People and Early History of Minneapolis by John H. Stevens, 1890.  Thankfully Stevens’ supposed mistake in street width in 1890 was an advantage when Minneapolis became a full on streetcar and automobile city.

 Finally, in his History of Minneapolis (1923) pages 259-260, Marion Shutter discusses the American Indian trails that came from southern Minnesota to St. Anthony Falls.  Hennepin Avenue was most probably the northernmost leg of what he calls, “The Spirit Lake Trail, connecting the Falls of St. Anthony with Spirit Lake, Iowa, crossed the southern boundary of Minnesota near the line between Jackson and Martin counties. From that point it followed a general northeasterly direction via Mankato, Traverse des Sioux [St. Peter] and Henderson to the falls. From Henderson northward this trail almost paralleled the old military road from Minneapolis to the Missouri River.”