Fifty-three feet of falling water: Minnehaha Falls pours over a limestone ledge into a gorge that carries Minnehaha Creek south toward the Mississippi. The falls and the park were established in 1885 on land set aside from railroad land grants to preserve this feature — one of the early acts of public land conservation in the country. In spring the falls run full and powerful, fed by snowmelt from the western suburbs.
By August in a dry year they slow to a trickle. In January, if temperatures drop far enough, the falls freeze into an extraordinary ice sculpture — a curtain of ice with water still running behind it — and hundreds of people hike in to see it. A statue of Hiawatha and Minnehaha by Jacob Fjelde, installed in 1912, stands at the top of the trail into the gorge, a relic of the Longfellow mania that made this place famous.
The park covers 194 acres and includes a bandshell, a restaurant in a historic building, and walking trails along the creek all the way to the Mississippi. On a summer Sunday the creek trail is full of joggers and somewhere near the falls a band is playing.