When winter and snow came to North Minneapolis each year it always meant it was time for outside activities such as snowman building, snow angels, snow forts, snowball fights, sledding, skiing and skating.
Back in 1908, Minneapolis ski jumpers were about to get their first ski jump which was being built by the newly formed Twin City Ski Club. On December 6, 1908 they announced it would be built near Keegan’s Lake, be 90 feet high and cost $1,000. The ski club didn’t realize that the ski jump would soon be on public land because the Minneapolis park board was finishing up the biggest land acquisition in its history which would include the ski jump land and Keegan’s Lake. This acquisition would soon be known as Glenwood Park and Glenwood Lake. This ski jump lasted for a number of years but eventually was removed. In 1920 the park board voted to spend $800 from its 1921 budget to build a new ski slide in Glenwood Park on a hill, near the golf course clubhouse. The new 50-foot scaffold construction was completed in February 1921. In 1923, the National Ski Tournament was held in Glenwood Park. When I was growing up in the 1950s and ‘60s, there were several times that young people took sleds down that ski jump! The ski jump was torn down in the late 1970s after the park board determined it was unsafe. I should note that the name Glenwood was changed to Theodore Wirth for both the park and lake, but everyone in my neighborhood still called it Glenwood.
Besides skiing, Glenwood Park also had some good sledding and tobogganing. The same hill that the ski jump was built on was also a great hill for tobogganing. Other great sledding spots were Sunset Hill where Glenwood Parkway met 26th Ave and the large hill at Farview Park. Of course, many slopes at other parks or school playgrounds would be used for sledding when it snowed. In my neighborhood, it was what we referred to as Fruen’s Hill where 5th Ave dead-ended just past Russell Ave. It was a good steep hill and was wide enough to not run into each other. The one downside, besides having to climb back up the hill, was that there was a back water stream from Bassett’s Creek and some tree stumps at the bottom. I once hit a stump with my runner sled and flipped over onto the frozen creek!
Skating was another activity many, both young and old, participated in. Sometimes it was on frozen lakes, creeks or ponds, at other times it was on flooded fields at places like Bryn Mawr Meadows or next to Loring School. There were also wooden hockey rink structures put up in a number of Northside parks. While I would occasionally venture down to the skating rink in Bryn Mawr, which had a warming house and benches, I mostly skated on a pond at the end of that same Bassett Creek backwater at the bottom of Fruen’s Hill where I went sledding. I’d walk to the hill carrying my skates (which had been my mom’s when she was younger), slid down the hill, then sat on a stump to put on my skates. Skating on a creek can be challenging because the ice isn’t all that smooth and sometimes there’d be a branch sticking up out of the ice. When I was done and put my boots back on, I’d have to trudge back up that hill.
As an old lady, I’m no longer fond of snow and ice, but like many who grew up in North Minneapolis we loved the snow when we were kids. Fond memories…