Re: [Mpls] Lake Sandy

[Annie Young]

Thanks Jeff for this valuable and factual information.  Now we need some words from Ray Harris.  One day a few years back Ray Harris brought me a picture of dredging going on - a very old photograph in frame which I believe he said the dredging machines were owned by his father.  That picture was on our wall of the Board room for a long time and is now part of the MPRB archives. Anyone know how to ask Ray the facts on the dredging questions that haven't been clarified in other places - just as a point for gathering more interesting Mpls. historic Information about our lakes, wetlands, swamps, marshes and bogs of the Great Grandfather Mississippi River and our state's 12,000+ lakes.
Annie Young
East Phillips

At 08:18 PM 7/24/03 -0500, jeff lee wrote:

Sandy Lake was a 40 acre lake in northeast Minneapolis, 31st Ave NE and St. Anthony Parkway.  By 1919 the lake no longer existed according to two sources. 

 

The reasons for its disappearance, as reported by Dr. Olaf Pfannkuch, from the Department of Geology and Geophysics at the University of Minnesota, in  "Lake Sandy Restoration Feasibility Study - Phase I(~1980s)" that there was a diversion of surface water runoff, a reduction in net ground water contribution and a destruction of the lake basin by fill.  However, research has found no records of massive fillings in the Sandy Lake locale.  There was some filling when the Soo Line railroad switchyard increased in size and once again during the building of St. Anthony Parkway.  By 1892 Sandy Lake was considered a meadow and later drained for an athletic field.  Then from 1914 to 1922 sewer lines and a drainage system were proposed and implemented by the Park Board and the Soo Line railroad, about which time for all purposes Sandy Lake no longer existed.

 

Theodore Wirth (Minneapolis Park System 1883-1944) reports that MPRB bought in 1892 a 183 acre site in NE Mpls that became Columbia Park. Wirth also said Sandy Lake was in 1892 "a shallow water area of 40 acres".  By 1945 Wirth wrote that Columbia Park and Sandy Lake (renamed Lake Menomin)was "now the site of the present large meadow, and 144 acres of hill and dale, heavily wooded in oaks".  Interestingly as well is that Wirth says there was a rink warming house with skate rental at Sandy Lake in 1891-1894.

 

Neither of the two authors reports any large scale filling and the tale that dredging Isles was used to fill Sandy Lake appears unsupported.  In fact Lake of the Isles was prior to dredging in 1889-1893 (before the Park Board owned Sandy Lake) and 1907 - 1991 "the park consisted of 100 acres of water, 67 acres of swamp and 33 acres of dry land, but after the operations were completed, the lake area was 120 acres, surrounded by 80 acres attractive, well-landscaped park land" (Wirth). Sound like most of the dredge spoil stayed south to create the park by filling 47 acres of "swamp".  Sandy Lake does exist in the grouping of wetlands created on Columbia golf course in the 1990s and after large rainfalls.

 

Jeff Lee

Powderhorn