Ask A Wedge Historian

It's our first installment of "Ask a Wedge Historian"! We have a resident historian in Kathy Kullberg. Kathy is a long-term Wedge resident who is bursting with passion for historical factoids. Contact Kathy with any questions or curiosities about the past lives of your home or apartment building, or anything else about this place's past.
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Hello. I had been told that there was once a horse stable at the corner of 26th & Dupont. Apparently you could "rent" a horse to ride around the lakes. Is there any validity to this?  Thanks 

Barb Nesheim


Barb, there was a stable to rent horses about where the Planned Parenthood clinic is now -at Lagoon and Emerson. This stable was still running in the late 1930s and into the 40s, as I know people who rented them. There is a photo of that in a book on Uptown. It was told that you had to walk the horses across Hennepin and then ride around the lakes and come back, once again dismounting to cross Hennepin. 

At 28th and Dupont/Emerson were the streetcar stables for the horses that pulled the very early streetcars. That early line went south on Lyndale and turned west on 27th street to Dupont, Then turned south on Dupont and went down to the stables at 28th. You could not rent them there though. Only for the streetcar use. 

Thanks for asking. Kathy 

BTW, there used to be racing of horses on the ice at Lake of the Isles from about 1880 to 1927! They raced mostly in a straight line beginning at the north end of the lake and making a slight turn to the East after the islands. They used sulkies and special shoes that caulks could be added to. The horses could be housed anywhere but most were summer race horses that were kept at the fairgrounds barns over at the Minnehaha Driving Track located at 35th and Minnehaha. That track was probably taken down about 1918 and made into a housing development. I have done quite a bit of research on this and have quite a few photos of this amazing story.