“The first duty devolving on the trustees in connection with the Home, was the selection of a site for the permanent buildings. This proved to be a laborious and difficult task. Patriotic and public spirited citizens in many towns, submitted offers of eligible sites for the Home. The trustees visited, and thoroughly inspected the grounds offered by Anoka, Litchfield, Hutchinson, Excelsior, Lake City, Albert Lea, Austin, Waseca, Madelia, Worthington, Redwood Falls, New Ulm, Alexandria and Minneapolis. Almost every one of these towns offered to the board free of cost, a beautiful and extensive tract of land, which, in any other state would be regarded as a model location for such an institution, and even in favored Minnesota, would, had it stood without competitors, have been entirely satisfactory. Amid this embarrassment of sumptuous offers, a choice was hard to make. Ballots to the number of one hundred and seven were taken before a decision was reached, and then the choice of the majority of the trustees fell on the tract at Minnehaha falls, generously tendered by the citizens of Minneapolis.
This tract embraces 51 acres of wooded land, commencing at the point of junction of Minnehaha creek with the Mississippi river, and thence running northward along the banks of both streams for a distance of nearly half a mile. Its general surface is nearly level, and lies over one hundred feet above the level of the water. For beauty, healthfulness and convenience of situation, picturesqueness of view and perfect adaptability to the purpose, it cannot be excelled and it has, withal, a historic and romantic interest which will prove an increasing attraction to visitors so long as the walls of the buildings placed upon it shall stand, to whatsoever uses they may be devoted. Directly across the Mississippi river the city of St. Paul has already procured a park of fifty acres, and connected it by a boulevard, along the blufl‘s, with her park and boulevard system. We have the pledge of the city of Minneapolis that our site shall be speedily connected with her park system, and plans now made involve the condemnation for public use, of at least two hundred acres adjacent, including Minnehaha falls, the gem of the whole region, and the key to all the beauties of the situation. Located thus, within the city limits of Minneapolis ; divided only by the river from the borders of St. Paul only three miles from Fort Snelling, around which so many military memories cluster, and, in summer, literally cooled by the spray of the laughing cascade immortalized in Longfellow’s classic, The ideal of a soldier’s haven would seem to have been found. “
-From the Annual report of the Board of Trustees of the Minnesota Soldiers’ Home and Soldiers’ Relief Fund, 1887
