Contemporary commuters who pass by or through Loring Park on their way to downtown Minneapolis unknowingly follow an ancient trail that once linked a Lake Calhoun Indian village to St. Anthony Falls. To avoid a bluff so precipitous that early farmers nicknamed it "Old Steepy," Indian people detoured through the marshy Loring Lake area. ("Old Steepy" was later graded to allow Hennepin Avenue to pass through.)

One of the earliest white settlers along Loring Lake was Joseph Smith Johnson, who paid $1.25 an acre for his 160-acre farm in 1856. A Maine native who had reportedly been in the California gold rush, Johnson was lured to Minnesota when land that had been part of the Fort Snelling military reservation was made available. As much for reasons of utility as aesthetics, Johnson built his farmhouse kitchen to face Jewett's Lake, named to honor his wife. The lake's proximity was handy for cutting blocks of ice in winter and for quick trips to the springhouse in summer.

Long after white settlement, one Ojibwa man continued to return each summer to camp at his ancestors' home beside the lake. Locals recorded his presence during the 1850s as he fished and hunted game that included the now extinct carrier pigeon. When young boys asked him his name, he replied, "Keg-o-ma-go-sheig." Ricky White, teacher of the American Indian Options Program at St. Paul's Battle Creek Middle School, translates the name as, "Don't touch me," or more to the point, "Don't mess with me."

"Perhaps Keg-o-ma-go-sheig was a trickster," says White, "or perhaps he was trying to teach a moral that native people use when teaching the young, such as, 'It's not nice to tease people.'"

Creating a public park around the lake was a cause first championed by an 1880 Minneapolis Journal editorial, which spoke of the need for parkland in the already densely populated city: "We need pleasure grounds within the city which can be reached on foot or with a quick cheap ride by the poor and feeble, the young children."

Heeding that directive, an 1883 city park plan was adopted by the newly formed Minneapolis Board of Park Commissioners. The chosen site-initially dubbed "Central Park"-surrounded what was then called Johnson's Lake, source of much of the city's ice. Widening the lake necessitated removing a floating bog and forming a lower basin that extended toward Hennepin Avenue. Primitive ice-cutting methods were used by excavators to extract the frozen marsh. The following summer, Charles Loring, the first president of the Minneapolis Park Board and the man for whom the park would ultimately be named, described the curious sight of "great black blocks of earth scattered over the grass." Quick thinking on Loring's part saved the small island that still stands in the lake; seeing that workmen had not yet excavated it, he instructed them to leave it alone.

Not all changes to the park's natural environment were for the better, however. In 1915, the installation of a city sewer system blocked the springs that fed Loring Lake, and dried up a brook that had once flowed northward from the lake. Charles Loring regretfully described one result: "After the spring was cut, the lake froze entirely over and all the fish died so that tons of them had to hauled away in the spring." The same year, street grading along the northeast edge of the park razed an area called Yale's Woods, which, according to residents of that era, was "a veritable bird paradise" of kinglets, purple finches, and numerous varieties of warblers. Eventually, geese and ducks became the park's avian residents, adding their own form of pollution to the lake. More recently, the Hennepin/Lyndale traffic snarl and the I-94 tunnel further unraveled the lake's fragile ecosystem.

A century of Park Board annual reports frequently refer to the lack of city funds needed to repair the long-neglected park. Throughout the years, worn-out Loring Lake has been patched and mended, but never cured.

Sealing its sides and filtering its water has already improved water conditions in the artificially maintained lake. The sealed lining reduces the amount of water needed to pump into the lake to maintain a healthy water elevation.

And although removing plants around the island in the lower basin has been controversial with some city residents, park board project manager Sandy Welsh explains that replacing invasive plants such as buckwheat with indigenous vegetation of iris and cattail will preserve the water quality. The newly planted island and shoreline will also discourage Canadian geese from grazing, prevent erosion, and enhance filtration.

With the addition of a viewing pier over the water, the new, improved Loring Lake will add a contemplative aspect to balance more vigorous park activities. The restoration should ensure that the lake will continue to draw people to its shores for generations to come. MM

Mary Martin Mason is a Minneapolis writer and the author of three books; the most recent is Out of the Shadows: Birth Fathers' Stories (O.J. Howard Publishing, 1995).