Editing Eden Prairie, Minnesota (section)

==History==
[[File:J.R. Cummins Cabin.jpg|thumb|left|Cummins Cabin, pre-1860]]
[[File:Cummins House 6.jpg|thumb|left|Current photo of the Cummins-Phipps-Grill House]]
[[File:Flailing Out Beans at Cummins Farm.jpeg|thumb|left|Flailing out beans at Cummins Farm]]

[[Native Americans in the United States|Native Americans]] were the first to live in the area. Originally, the land was part of the [[Dakota people|Great Dakota Nation]], but when the [[Ojibwe]] arrived from the [[Great Lakes region]], the tribes began to clash over the land. The Ojibwe were armed with knives and guns traded to them by white settlers and fur traders, and after years of bloody warfare the Ojibwe had forced the Dakota to give up all their land east of the Mississippi River, and north of the [[Crow Wing River]], land that did not include what is now Eden Prairie.<ref name=":0">{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=beiNACabKqwC|title=Eden Prairie: A Brief History|last=Wittenberg|first=Marie|date=January 1, 2010|publisher=The History Press|isbn=9781596299412|language=en}}</ref>

On May 25, 1858, a battle was fought between the Dakota and the Ojibwe in the southern part of Eden Prairie, just north of the Minnesota River, an area known as Murphy's Ferry. The Ojibwe wished to "avenge the murder" of one of their people by the Dakota the previous fall. The Ojibwe had 200 warriors and the Dakota somewhere between 60 and 70, but the Dakota proved victorious, wounding the young Ojibwe chief.<ref name=":0" /> The tribes continued to fight over territory well into the 1860s, even after the "[[Dakota War of 1862|Sioux Uprising" of 1862]], when most Dakota people were removed from Minnesota.

Among the notable Native Americans who lived in the Eden Prairie area was Chief Shoto. Born into the band of Chief Wabash, he went on to be the chief of the Red Wing Dakota tribe for 15 years, leaving them and becoming Chief of the "Little Six" band of Dakota until the uprising in 1862, during which he became a scout for then [[Henry Hastings Sibley|Governor Sibley]] from 1862 to 1870, returning to the Little Six band in 1872. He died in 1899 at age 99 at his home in Eden Prairie.<ref name=":0" />

In 1851, a treaty opened land west of the [[Mississippi River]] to settlement allowing [[Settler|pioneers]] to settle in what is now Eden Prairie. Many early farmhouses remain in the town and can be found on the [[National Register of Historic Places]]. One of these early settlers was John Cummins, an Irish-born immigrant who built what is now known as the "Cummins-Phipps-Grill House" with his wife Mattie in 1880.<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.edenprairiehistory.org/page4/page3/page3.html|title=Cummins House - The Eden Prairie, Minnesota, Historical Society|date=2010|website=The Eden Prairie, Minnesota, Historical Society|publisher=The Eden Prairie, Minnesota, Historical Society|access-date=April 10, 2016}}</ref> Manuscripts indicate that Cummins was an avid and respected horticulturist, scientist, and farmer; he used his farmland to experiment with different strains of apples and grapes to try to find one that could withstand the harsh climate in Minnesota.<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www2.mnhs.org/library/findaids/01170.xml|title=JOHN R. CUMMINS: An Inventory of His Papers at the Minnesota Historical Society|last=Cummins|first=John|website=Minnesota Historical Society|publisher=Minnesota Historical Society|access-date=April 10, 2016}}</ref> The Cummins family sold this property to the Phipps family in 1908.<ref name=":0" />

In 1853, John H. McKenzie and Minnesota Territory secretary Alexander Wilkins platted the town of Hennepin along the Minnesota River in what is now southeastern Eden Prairie. According to area historian Helen Holden Anderson, topographic disadvantages for the transport of agricultural goods caused Hennepin to be eclipsed by other towns in the region and the town soon vanished from maps.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.swnewsmedia.com/chaska_herald/news/local/ghost-towns-of-the-southwest-metro/article_f9661c1c-a241-5ebd-b232-38228fae92b7.html|title=Ghost towns of the southwest metro}}</ref>

[[File:Reconstructed Eden Prairie Depot.jpg|thumb|Reconstructed Minneapolis-St. Louis railway depot]]

The city was originally named "Eden" in 1853 by the writer [[Elizabeth F. Ellet]], who chose the name because of her admiration of the "beautiful prairie" that occupies the southern part of town.<ref>{{Cite book|title=Minnesota Geographic Names|last=Upham|first=Warren|publisher=Minnesota Historical Society|year=1820|location=St. Paul, MN|pages=221 |url=https://archive.org/stream/collections17minnuoft#page/220/mode/2up}}</ref> Eden Prairie's town board held its first meeting in a log schoolhouse on May 11, 1858, the same day Minnesota became a state. In the 1870s, a post office called Washburn was established in Eden Prairie Township and would be discontinued in 1903. Also that decade, a depot along the [[Minneapolis and St. Louis Railway|Minneapolis-St. Louis Railroad]] was constructed near modern Eden Prairie Road and [[Highway 212 (Minnesota)|Highway 212]]. A replica on restricted land was built in 2022 beside the [[Southwest LRT Trail|Minnesota River Bluffs LRT Regional Trail]].<ref>{{Cite web |last=Weber |first=Mark |date=October 17, 2022 |title=Water project recreates old EP train depot |url=https://www.eplocalnews.org/2022/10/17/water-project-recreates-old-ep-train-depot/ |access-date=April 27, 2025 |website=Eden Prairie Local News |language=en-US}}</ref>

Eden Prairie's farming community grew slowly over the years. For most of its existence, Eden Prairie was a slow-growing, pastoral village on the far southwest fringes of the [[Minneapolis–Saint Paul|Twin Cities]]. Between 1880 and 1960, Eden Prairie's population only grew from about 739 to 2,000. [[Flying Cloud Airport]] was the first sign of big development in 1946. The 1960s and 1970s were decades of growth for the city's parks and recreation system. In the mid-1970s, the community gained a higher profile with the addition of Interstate Highway [[Interstate 494|494]] and the [[Eden Prairie Center Mall|Eden Prairie Center]] mall. Eden Prairie became a village in 1962 and a [[statutory city (Minnesota)|statutory city]] in 1974. One of Eden Prairie's popular lakes, Staring Lake, is named for Jonas Platt Staring (1809–1894), who built the first house by the lake.