Minneapolis, Minnesota

Since 1883, Minneapolis has retained the original Grand Rounds vision of interconnected parks, preserves, parkways and paths, like this one around Lake Nokomis.

“I would have the City itself a work of art,” proclaimed landscape architect Horace Cleveland about his plan for the Minneapolis Park System. The system was ultimately named The Grand Rounds because it uses parkways to link its components in a giant circle. The plan for the Grand Rounds morphed through the decades based primarily on financial realties. But the vision of naturalistic parks in a continuous loop provided guidance for these changes. As a result, the Grand Rounds to this day receives the highest praise from park connoisseurs. For example, landscape architectural historian William Tisher calls the park system “perhaps America’s finest urban open space network.”* And Alexander Garvin in The American City: What Works, What Doesn’t, calls it “the best-located, best-financed, best-designed, best-maintained park system in America.”**

Minneapolis gained a big advantage by starting its park planning relatively early. Between 1880 and 1885, the city tripled in size to 129,200 people.*** This growth rate did not go unnoticed. In 1883, the voters approved a referendum to create a board of park commissioners independent of city government with the power to issue bonds and levy taxes. Shortly thereafter, the commissioners hired Cleveland to prepare the first plan and in 1891 they revised his plan, enlarging the circle and bestowing the name of the Grand Rounds.

The Grand Rounds has adapted well to new forms of outdoor recreation, such as wind surfing on Lake Calhoun.

Today, the Grand Rounds is a 50-mile chain of connected parks, preserves, paths and parkways. The total park system encompassed 6,400 acres, strategically located so that green space is within every house in the City of Minneapolis. In the southwest corner of this loop, a chain of lakes welcomes swimming, sailing and fishing and allows canoeists to paddle between Lake Calhoun, Lake of the Isles, Cedar Lake and Brownie Lake. In the southern leg of the Rounds, hikers and bicyclists use the Minnehaha Parkway to reach Lake Nokomis, Lake Hiawatha and Minnehaha Falls, all associated with Longfellow’s famous epic poem The Song of Hiawatha.   

Canoeists and kayakers can paddle a chain of lakes within the Grand Rounds: Lake Calhoun, Cedar Lake, Brownie Lake and Lake of the Isles, shown here.

The eastern segment of the Grand Rounds follows the Mississippi River from Minnehaha Park through the University of Minnesota and into downtown Minneapolis where St. Anthony Falls once powered the mills that made this city the capital of the flour industry until the 1930s. In the 1980s, Minneapolis began revitalizing the then-dilapidated West Side Milling District and recognized the importance of incorporating the Grand Rounds. In 1994, the City restored the Stone Arch Bridge, originally built as a railway crossing of the Mississippi River in 1883. The bridge now serves pedestrians and bicyclists, creating a handy link to the bikeway system east of the River and in the City of St. Paul. The Stone Arch Bridge paved the way for other rejuvenation projects including the incorporation of the Milwaukee Road Railroad Depot into a new hotel complex and the conversion of old mill buildings into modern condominiums within blocks of downtown office towers. Then some of the mills themselves were excavated to create Mill Ruins Park. The Washburn Crosby Mill was restored and converted into the Mill City Museum, adding yet another destination as the Grand Rounds continues to evolve in the spirit of the original plan from the 1880s.

In 1994, the restored 1883 Stone Arch Bridge was reopened to walkers and cyclists, creating a pedestrian/bicycle link between the Grand Rounds in Minneapolis and the bikeway system of St. Paul on the east side of the Mississippi River.

* William H. Tishler, “H.W.S. Cleveland,” in American Landscape Architecture, ed. William H. Tishler (Washington, D.C.: Preservation Press, 1989), 27 as quoted in Charlene K. Roice and Denis P. Gardiner, Making the City Itself a Work of Art: An Historical Context for The Grand Rounds, Minneapolis, prepared for Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board, 2000, 29.
** Alexander Garvin, The American City: What Works, What Doesn’t (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1995), 66 as quoted in Charlene K. Roice and Denis P. Gardiner, Making the City Itself a Work of Art: An Historical Context for The Grand Rounds, Minneapolis, prepared for Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board, 2000, 29.
*** Historical information is from Charlene K. Roice and Denis P. Gardiner, Making the City Itself a Work of Art: An Historical Context for The Grand Rounds, Minneapolis, prepared for Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board, 2000.