100 years ago this month, on June 11, 1921 to be precise, the Victory Memorial Drive was dedicated.
The acquisition of the lands for what was originally called Glenwood-Camden Parkway began in 1910 and ended the following year. Soon after the land was acquired, the construction began but stopped in 1917 because of WWI. It was during the war that the idea of having part of the parkway become a memorial happened.
Then parks superintendent Theodore Wirth included this idea in his 1918 annual Minneapolis Parks Department report. In 1919 Charles Loring, who had been the first president of the Minneapolis Park Board from 1883-1892, published a booklet titled A Plea for the Planting of Memorial Trees in Memory of our Dead Heroes and for Beautifying our State Highways. In the book, Loring writes in great detail about the Memorial Tree movement around the country, and notes that Minneapolis had already begun work on the memorial drive (this being at Loring’s insistence). Charles Loring gave $50,000 to be put in trust for the maintenance of the memorial drive and also paid for all of the original elm trees that were planted on the drive. Unfortunately Charles Loring, then 87, was not well enough to attend the dedication of the Victory Memorial Drive (for which he was much responsible) but drove over the new parkway the day before with his old friend William Folwell. The design for the Victory Memorial Drive was done by Minneapolis Parks Department’s landscape architect Phelps Wyman.
There are 568 markers on the drive honoring the men and women of Hennepin County who died during WWI. The original markers were wooden crosses but were replaced by bronze ones in stars and crosses in 1928. The crosses and stars showed the name, rank and company of the soldier they remembered (crosses placed for Christian soldiers and stars were placed in honor of soldiers of the Jewish faith). These bronze markers at first were upright but were eventually laid flat on the ground.
The original Victory Flagpole was also wooden and was replaced by a bronze one by the American Legion of Hennepin County in 1923. The pole was set in an ornamental brick base containing eight bronze tablets. These eight tablets are now on walls near the flagpole. The brick flagpole base was replaced by a red granite base in the 1970s and in 2011 that was replaced by the current Lake Superior green granite base.
The dedication of the Victory Memorial Drive on June 11, 1921 was a grand affair with a parade and program. There were speeches by a number of people including Governor J.A.O. Preus, Minneapolis Mayor J.E. Meyers and Mrs. Theodore Roosevelt. There were also marching soldiers and aeroplanes flying over dropping poppies.
You can find more information about the Victory Memorial Drive, including info about all the 568 veterans honored on the drive, at hennepin.us/victorymemorialdrive.
You can find more photos of the construction and the dedication of the Victory Drive online at the Minnesota Historical Society: https://search.mnhs.org/?imagesonly=yes&q=Victory%20Memorial%20Drive&startindex=26.