One of the most notable, attractive and appropriate additions in the history of our park system undoubtedly is the ingeniously and beautifully executed artificial cascade, built at Glenwood Park by Mr. Francois Scotti at the direction of and as a gift to the city from The Honorable Charles M. Loring. The cascade is located on the west shore of Glenwood Lake and adorns the formerly uninteresting, rather formal slope of an otherwise prominent and splendidly wooded hill. We may well forget, for the moment, that the cascade is the work of man, and describe it as being nature’s own creation.
Glenwood Parkway, as a part of the Grand Rounds, avoiding the low lands of the lake shore, was laid out over the supporting lower ledge of the rock formation on which the upper strata of the cascade find their support. Great care was taken when the roadway was built to preserve the many large, picturesque boulders, which overhang the weather-beaten ledges, and but few tool marks show the means employed by the builders in forcing their way through, in the construction of the roadway. In ages gone by, the waters tumbling down from the cascade undoubtedly followed a straight course toward the lake, but the force of their fall gradually washed out a basin and so worked into the underlying softer formation of stone, and, by the laws of gravity, found an outlet toward the lower elevations of ground to the north. The rushing water along the out cropping ledge has not as yet been able to displace or erase to any great extent the harder rock formations and boulders, so that it is confined to a narrow irregular course, through which the stream winds at a rapid pace, over and between obstructing stones, to the edge of the northern slope of the hill, where it assumes an easterly course and descends to the lake.
The height of the cascade over all is about forty feet. The water, coming from the wooded hills beyond, tumbles over out-cropping ledges and between rugged boulders to a small pool twenty feet above the foot of the cascade, from where it takes the final plunge into the basin of the grotto, where it forms a good-sized pool before it continues on its last short journey to the nearby Glenwood Lake.
Nature always provides a proper setting for such picturesque creations of Mother Earth, and has intermingled with the foliage of the predominat ing oak trees, with which our hills are so beautifully clad, the various tints of green of our native evergreens, and the many shades of color of foliage, flowers and fruit of deciduous trees, shrubs, vines and perennial plants.
About fifty feet to the east, and fifteen feet below the grotto and the boulevard, is picturesque Glenwood Lake, with its oak woods on the farther shores and a fine tamarack grove on the nearby swamp meadow forming an interesting foreground. The cascade fits so well into the general landscape and is such a true imitation of the natural appearance of the ledge and rock formations found in this part of the country, that it deceives the eye of the most critical observer, and both the generous donor and the talented artist may well be congratulated upon the remarkable success of their combined work and genius.
The power plant, which will be installed to furnish the water for the cascade, will be so placed that no one will know that the lake feeds the cascade in place of the cascade feeding the lake. Some additional rock work will be necessary between the boulevard and the lake, and, also, along the slope of the hill south of the cascade. At the site of the cascade was the so-called Indian Spring, known since the time of the early settlers for the mineral properties and uniformly low temperature of its water. Through the excavation for the foundation of the cascade, the flow of this spring was greatly increased. A drain conducts the water into a basin, from which it will later on be led to drinking fountains and artificial rock springs on the banks of the roadway. The amount of water delivered by the spring is thirty-six hundred gallons per hour.
From the 34th Annual Report of the Board of Park Commissioners
City of Minneapolis 1917
The Loring Cascade in 2018