(soft piano music) - [Narrator] Minnesota, the Land of 10,000 Lakes, is covered by more water than any other U.S.

state.

The true number of lakes is 11,842, and over 6,500 rivers and streams make this a land of true natural wonder.

Lake Minnetonka, located just west of the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St.

Paul, is among the most famous and storied, with a rich history spanning thousands of years.

Much has been written about such locations on Minnetonka as Wayzata Bay, Excelsior, and Big Island, which are rife with historical people, buildings, and occurrences through the years.

A lesser known Lake Minnetonka gem is St.

Louis Bay, located on the southeast shoreline of Lower Lake Minnetonka just north of Carson's Bay.

As other areas of the lake were being developed in the late 1800s, St.

Louis Bay rapidly became a tourist and transportation hub for this portion of the lake.

This is the story of St.

Louis Bay's development and the history of the infrastructure required to make this location what it is today.

(soft piano music) - I'm Lisa Stevens.

I'm the President of the Lake Minnetonka Historical Society.

So we're in the Wayzata Depot right now, which was built in 1906, and this is how people got to Lake Minnetonka.

They didn't come to this depot in 1867 when the first train arrived.

That was sort of down the line a bit.

But when they did start coming here by train, they took a steamboat or any kind of boat, any kind of water conveyance or ice or foot or horse to get to the other parts of the lake, and it's a big lake with a lot of bays.

- [Narrator] In the mid-1800s, Charles Gibson, a successful lawyer and landowner from St.

Louis, Missouri, was attracted to Minnesota's climate and natural resources.

He found Lake Minnetonka to be an exceptional destination, and he quickly envisioned Lake Minnetonka's development.

He first visited Minnesota in 1854 to escape the heat of the St.

Louis summers and made regular journeys to Minnesota for over 50 years.

He purchased land, which came to be known as Northome Peninsula, in 1875, and built a home in 1876.

Gibson called his new summer home Northome.

In 1878, Gibson's son Victor purchased 108 acres from Elijah and Mariah Carson for $2,700.

The land was sold to three investors from Kentucky on June 10th, 1879, and the first of the great Lake Minnetonka hotels was built: the Hotel St.

Louis.

The hotel, which was completed in 1879, was 217 feet long and three stories tall, with spacious verandas on each floor which overlooked St.

Louis Bay.

The hotel opened to rave reviews.

Publisher Alfred Diamond, in his publication, The Magic Northland, wrote, "The Hotel St.

Louis is the first first-class hotel "to be built on Lake Minnetonka, "one of the most complete summer resorts in the Northwest."

A popular form of lake transportation and entertainment was the regularly scheduled steamboat voyages.

Steamboats proliferated on Lake Minnetonka during this period, with dozens of vessels in service.

The Hotel St.

Louis and numerous lakeside communities were ports of call for these boats.

The safety of these vessels, particularly the steam boilers, was called into question following an explosion aboard the May Queen in June of 1879, which took the life of the engineer and resulted in numerous injuries.

Publisher Diamond wondered about the safety of the steamboat Mary.

George Halsted, a major in the Union Army during the Civil War and the owner of the Mary, insisted the Mary was safe and that such a tragedy could not happen again.

Then at dawn on July 1st, 1880, Diamond himself was standing on the dock of the new Hotel St.

Louis awaiting boarding of the Mary when the boat's boiler exploded.

The Minneapolis Tribune reported: "The concussion was terrible."

Three people were killed, and eight others, including Diamond, were injured.

George Halsted was now out of the steamboat business and spent his remaining days at his remote Minnetonka cottage called The Hermitage.

The Hermitage and steamboat Mary had been obtained by Halsted following the death of his brother, Frank Halsted.

Frank had owned the Mary and built The Hermitage.

Frank took his own life by drowning and was recovered by a fisherman in Lake Minnetonka.

George lived the remainder of his life at The Hermitage as a self-professed hermit until it burned down in 1901, taking Halsted's life with it.

By 1882, the hotel landed back in Gibson's hands due to an untimely death and squabbles by the Kentucky investors.

The hotel was successful for several years, but by 1885, it had become overwhelmed in debt.

Charles Gibson paid off the debt and became the full owner of the hotel.

Gibson and his wife Virginia wasted no time platting all remaining acres into lots to be sold for summer homes and cottages.

Historian Barbara M. Sykora has researched Lake Minnetonka for decades and has many published works on the history of Charles Gibson, St.

Louis Bay, and other Lake Minnetonka stories.

She recounts Gibson's replatting of his land for homes and parks.

- He always had plans on plotting it out and selling it and making it for homeowners.

He always talked about parks, but I always think it was like: "If it doesn't work, we're going to plot it out "and sell it to neighboring people and go from there," so.

- It kind of sounds like he was maybe a little less altruistic about developing parks and things, a little more like: "How am I going to make money?"

- I think you've figured out Charles Gibson.

You know, I do not want to speak badly of him, but I always think he had an idea where it was going to lead to.

He did very well, he was very successful.

He made a great life.

His home in St.

Louis was beautiful.

He helped develop a couple of parks there.

But I think he did like what parks did for people also, but if it didn't work out, you know, he just took the next step over and plotted them out and made Deephaven what it is, to be perfectly honest with you.

- [Narrator] Gibson faced a challenge with his prime shoreline: St.

Louis Bay was too shallow for large boats to reach.

To address this, Gibson dredged the bay to accommodate the larger vessels and used the fill from the dredging process to create two new islands: Lighthouse Island and Tattoo, now known as Bug Island.

In 1882, Gibson, with Hazen J. Burton and other investors, established the Minnetonka Yacht Club, one of the oldest yacht clubs in the country, on Lighthouse Island.

Despite the name, no actual lighthouse has ever been built on Lighthouse Island.

The clubhouse was designed by noted architect Harry Wild Jones, who had a summer cottage in Northome.

Minnetonka Yacht Club held sailing regattas with local and national competition throughout the summer months.

Eventually, a large clubhouse was constructed on the island that hosted all club activities and social events.

In addition, the Lake Minnetonka Ice Yacht Club was formed by Theodore Wetmore, a New York Hudson Bay ice boater.

He popularized the sport on Lake Minnetonka and started racing competitions.

The members soon constructed a grand clubhouse of their own on Bug Island for its social functions.

The club hosted ice-boating competitions throughout the winter season.

As these developments occurred on the bay, transportation became an important consideration to get people to and from Lake Minnetonka.

Thoroughfares from the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St.

Paul directly to the eastern portion of Lake Minnetonka were limited to rough roads with no mass transit.

In 1887, Gibson sold a right-of-way deed to the Chicago, Milwaukee, and St.

Paul Railroad, and a train depot was built in front of the Hotel St.

Louis, which facilitated easy transportation to the hotel from Minneapolis.

The Hotel St.

Louis thrived in the early 1890s, and, as the first large hotel on Lake Minnetonka, people from the Twin Cities and from across the United States made the hotel their destination for an escape from summer heat and to enjoy the variety of health-related benefits.

- And once that large conveyance happened, the tourism exploded on Lake Minnetonka, and Hotel St.

Louis was the first manifestation to take advantage of tourists from the South who were told there were no mosquitoes here, that it was the perfect climate, it was very good for your health.

You went here if you had tuberculosis.

You brought your servants with you.

They did not stay in the hotel with you.

And you enjoyed yourself fishing and relaxing by the shore.

- You know, I don't think like the way we vacation now, they vacationed there.

I think it was very slow and quiet.

Ladies wore nothing but giant clothes, many layers.

I can't imagine them out there hiking or water-skiing or swimming.

- [Narrator] Reaching a pinnacle in about 1899, the Hotel St.

Louis continued to struggle with competition from bigger and better hotels on Lake Minnetonka.

And Lake Minnetonka was becoming an area of permanent homes for local Minnesotans.

(soft ethereal music) Further complicating the Hotel St.

Louis struggles, the Minnetonka Ice Yacht Club, an important asset in the area, burned down on January 14th, 1904.

Years later, in 1943, the Minnetonka Yacht Club met a similar fate and burned to the ground.

By the end of 1905, the Gibsons had sold off nearly all the lakefront property because there was speculation of the trolley service coming to Deephaven.

This occurred in 1906.

Tourism at the Hotel St.

Louis had waned to the point of the hotel closing.

The newest and best summer attractions for vacationers had moved to the Western states as preferred summer destinations, like Yellowstone Park in Wyoming, and the transition from a resort area to permanent private homes was well underway.

The Hotel St.

Louis was demolished in 1907 to make way for these new private residences.

Thus marked the end of an era dominated by this large resort hotel.

- So that area where the Hotel St.

Louis was built in 1879 was unique in that it was initially served by a train coming from the east in Minneapolis and later, by 1906, which is right when the hotel was coming down, the streetcar came in as well.

- [Narrator] In 1910, on the grounds of the hotel, Walter Donald Douglas built a handsome mansion as a wedding present to his second wife, Mahala Dutton Douglas.

Walter Douglas's family co-founded the Quaker Oats Company, and he was a member of the Quaker Oats executive board.

He called the home Walden.

In 1912, Walter Douglas and his wife went on a three-month European tour to find furniture for their home.

Then, in a fateful twist, the couple booked passage for their return trip on the RMS Titanic.

Mr.

Douglas went down with the ship in what was recalled by survivors as heroic fashion.

Mrs.

Douglas was able to secure a spot on one of the lifeboats and survived.

She continued to spend her summers at Walden until her death in 1945.

Walden exists today as a private residence.

Today, evidence remains both at the sites of the Hotel St.

Louis and under the lake's surface.

Extensive searches by underwater explorer Kelly Nehowig, who has dived over a hundred times in St.

Louis Bay, have disclosed numerous relics which were scuttled or lost through the years.

- So my name is Kelly Nehowig.

I made my first scuba dive in 1973 when I was 13 years old.

Went out with a good friend of mine and his older brothers.

And they were certified divers, and at the end of one of their dives, they let me strap on one of the tanks and take a dip myself.

And I instantly fell in love with the sport and the activity, and so I was hooked.

And from that point forward, I got certified in 1977 and did just a ton of diving in my teenage years.

Up to the point to where my freshman year of college, I attended the Florida Institute of Technology, and I was an oceanography major.

Then wind the clock forward a little bit to 2007, and I came in contact with a group called Maritime Heritage Minnesota, Chris Olson and Ann Merriman.

And they're marine archeologists located over in St.

Paul, and they do a lot of contract work with the state in terms of getting small grants for figuring out essentially what's in the bottom of our lakes.

So I started being a volunteer diver for Maritime Heritage Minnesota in about 2007.

In 2011, I was on my own diving out here in Deephaven just from the shore and discovered a couple of wrecks, small wooden wrecks, had not known about.

But I kept diving out here on my own and started finding lots of material that led to lots of questions.

So there was a lot of material from piers and from docks, landings and so forth, as well as other artifacts that started to really pique my interest as far as: why are these here, what's the history?

How did these come to be here?

Not really knowing anything about the history of Deephaven and St.

Louis Bay, we started to do some research and find out about the Hotel St.

Louis that was here turn of the century, the trains and the trolleys that ran out here as part of their daily route to bring people to the hotel and back and forth to the cities, as well as some of the steamboat landings and the other information that was available about the area.

So that really got me curious about the area and how these artifacts that we were finding tied into the historical context out here on the lake.

We did find a sign that we attribute to the train depot station that was from U.S.

Express Money Orders.

And this was back from the day when people didn't have checking accounts and they didn't have any other means to transfer money.

So money orders were used, and the money orders was actually handled through the railroad system.

So they would be issued at the depot.

The trains would then bring them to the central banks for processing and so forth.

We also found a lot of material of a personal nature.

One of the items that we found were glassware that we could attribute to either the hotel and/or the steamboats that would come into the landings here.

These were water glasses or cocktail glasses that would be used by passengers or by the hotel guests that wound up on the lake bottom.

There was a lot of bottles that we attribute back to, again, that time period.

One of which was really interesting was a round-bottomed glass bottle.

That was popular in the late 1800s, early 1900s, and it was used for soda pop storage.

The reason for the round bottom was they were concerned that, if they stood it on end, the cork stopper would dry out, and the carbonation would all leave from the bottle.

So they made the bottles round on the bottom so that they could be stored on the sides.

There was all kinds of other types of material that we're still uncovering and that we're finding that continues to tell the story of that period of time, the late 1800s, early 1900s, when this was a very popular resort area with lots of tourists and a lot of people coming and going.

Just about every time I come out here, there's something to be found.

As we begin to piece together this whole story, you know, it's like a jigsaw puzzle, and there's one more piece, you know, that we find that kind of helps tell the story as we uncover these things.

- [Narrator] The Northome stone arch was constructed in 1877 as the entrance to the Northome development.

- And those arches still stand today.

One little rumor about the arches, a little myth we like to dispel, is that they were once double arches so that there could be two-way traffic.

Not true: it was always just one big arch.

The pictures prove it.

It was gated at one time, so it was a gated entry with big wrought iron gates that you can see photographs of, showing each side looking toward the lake and toward Deephaven proper.

But they continued into the woods, and for the most part today, they've been nicely maintained.

But no double arches, never happened.

Truck didn't knock one down.

None of those things happened at all.

- [Narrator] The depot building from the railroad and trolley days still exists.

It was moved onto an adjacent lot and is today a private residence.

Construction debris on the edges of the property include the stone fragments from the steps that used to be located in front of the depot building leading to the dock landing.

Steps are still in place that led guests from the Hotel St.

Louis to the shoreline.

- Looking at that beach and the area today, you can't imagine the amount of activity that must have happened over the years.

It's between trains, street cars, hotels, probably all kinds of commerce going on that we can't necessarily identify from looking at the photos.

You can almost hear people milling about.

You see dozens and hundreds at times sailboats, people bathing, people canoeing.

It was a really busy little area, which we think of it as not being so much today, but it actually maintained that history from probably the 1870s on.

That one protected little harbor in there was just sort of a hive of human activity, and I always think that's interesting when history continues on.

Because so often it doesn't, but, in this case, it did, and I love it around Lake Minnetonka when you can go to certain places.

You can almost make everything, because the world of course is black and white, you can make everything go black and white.

You can now hear it in the way that they did back then.

And that's one of those areas that, as we discover more photos, read more accounts about it, you get a feel for what it would've been like in the 1870s.

And even underneath the water, you can see remnants of what that was, and that's something we couldn't do 50, you know, even a hundred years ago.

But we can do it now.

Now that we're in the future, we can better see the past.

- [Narrator] And so today, with careful examination and historical documents in hand, one can still find the shadows of an earlier time when this portion of Lake Minnetonka was helping to make the area an attractive destination for people from around the country.

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