Editor's Note: This is a new feature that will be published each week in Lakeshore Weekly News. In each issue, a member of one of the Lake Minnetonka area historical societies will offer a look at someone or something from the Lake Minnetonka area's past.
Historical societies from Deephaven, Excelsior, Long Lake, Minnetonka, Wayzata and the Westonka area are planning to participate, and each society will take turns writing articles.
We hope you enjoy this weekly "reflection" on the Lake Minnetonka area's history!
By Jeff Magnuson
Lake Minnetonka is well known for having many famous hotels. Most came and went in a relatively short time, usually burning toward the end of the first great tourist era of the late 1800s.
The few surviving hotels were converted to rest homes or apartments before they, too, succumbed to fire.
But there was one great Minnetonka hotel that operated almost 60 years. This was the Hotel Del Otero.
Let's imagine Spring Park 100 years ago: The Del Otero towering above the lake on the rise between West Arm and Spring Park Bay, approximately where the parking lot of the Minnetonka Mist is now.
The hotel was surrounded by acres of woods, picnic grounds, a ball field, and, by the lake, a fine swimming beach.
Next to the beach, there was a separate building for dancing and bowling. The building was known in those days as a casino, not to be confused with the casinos we know today.
Large steamboats - and later, fast streetcar boats - came up Spring Park Bay and docked at the large wharf in front of the hotel, about where the boat ramp is today.
Visitors who came by boat entered the hotel through a pergola covered with flowering plants. Those arriving by train literally stepped off the platform right into the hotel.
They would enter the lobby with its big fireplace, piano and cozy stuffed chairs. After checking in, guests could visit either the main dining room or the porch dining room that offered an excellent view of the lake.
Porches ran all around the hotel, making the most of the lake breezes. A separate circular porch allowed ladies a place to relax away from the rest of their families.
A typical guest room included two comfortable double beds, a dressing table and chairs.
The hotel began like many others in the lake area. It was James J. Hill and his Great Northern Railroad that prompted the building of the Del Otero as well as the more famous Lafayette in Minnetonka Beach and Woolnough's out on Island Park.
When the Del Otero was built in 1887, the Great Northern was still only a regional railroad called the St. Paul, Minneapolis and Manitoba.
It would be another six years before the "Empire Builder," as Hill was known, would push his rails to the Pacific Ocean and rename the line the Great Northern.
The railroad spur off the main line in Wayzata was completed to Spring Park in 1881. It was built primarily to siphon off huge amounts of timber that were being cut in the Westonka area as well as to transport guests to Hill's fabulous Lafayette Hotel in Minnetonka Beach.
Hill could see that Spring Park would be a great location for another hotel.
He ordered that the Del Otero be built at a cost of no less than $5,000.
It was said that the hotel was built upon American Indian burial mounds, and indeed, there are records of many mounds in the Spring Park and Mound area.
The writer is a member of the Westonka Historical Society.