Join the hiking group for a hike in the pleasant acreage of Bredeson Park in Edina. Bredeson Park has a two mile bike path and a two mile walking path, all located in or about a scenic park that includes a small lake. The park also is an excellent birding site, with green herons, warblers, sparrows, Cedar waxwings, flickers, hawks, egrets and swallows.
Edina was settled primarily by Irish immigrants in the 1850's, who settled in the Cahill Community, named for Reverend Thomas Cahill, a Roman Catholic priest. The Cahill Community was known as "hard scrabble hill" for that rocky, swampy, and hilly portion of then Richfield Township and land at the time was cheap, costing $1.25 per acre in 1857. Eventually, the Cahill community formed an alliance with the Scotsmen who had farms further north and decided to secede from what was then Richfield Township because of unfair taxes and bad roads. In 1888, they incorporated their own village and called it Edina, even though the Irish would have preferred to name it Killarney.
Edina is named for the Edina Mill on Minnehaha Creek. Andrew Craik (1817-1892), a native of Edinburg, Scotland, who moved to Minnesota in 1869 from Trois-Rivières, Quebec, Canada, by way of La Crosse, Wisconsin, purchased a mill at Richfield in 1870 and renamed it "Edina Mills" for Edinburg. The mill specialized in oatmeal and pearl barley. In 1889, after Andrew Craik opened "Craik & Son," a general store near the center of Minneapolis with his son, John Craik, a decline in water power caused the Edina Mill to fail. Many Edina street names reflect the area's early Irish heritage and descendants of those Irish settlers continued to influence local politics for almost a century.
Directions: From the Crosstown Highway (Hwy 62), west of Highway 100, exit on Tracy Avenue and proceed north a few blocks to Olinger Blvd. Take a left onto Olinger Blvd. and follow it around to the park entrance, which will be on the left. From Highway 100, exit at Vernon Avenue and go west about a mile to Olinger Blvd. Go south (left) on Olinger Blvd. and continue to the park entrance, which will be on the right.
Map to hike starting point: 5901 Olinger Blvd
Edina, MN 55436-1909
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This page was last updated on May 31, 2015.
