Zipping toward our grandparent’s house along Highway 100, my sister and I knew we were close when we saw the beehive fireplace in the old Lilac Park! We must have driven by it hundreds of times in the 70’s and 80’s, exiting at Minnetonka Boulevard en route to Dakota Avenue.
Submitted 4.17.2022
“My family moved from California to Plymouth in 1974 when I was nine. The beehive fireplace in Lilac Park near Minnetonka Boulevard in St. Louis Park was one of the first memories I have of Minnesota. My dad arrived a few weeks early to get the new house ready. The rest of the family flew to Minneapolis. It was my first time out of California.”
Submitted 1.3.2021
I attended the old Fern Hill School, corner of Minnetonka Boulevard and Ottawa in the 1950’s. We walked to the original Lilac Park for our fall leaf collecting walk and for the end of school picnic. It felt like a very long way. Love that park and its stone work. I am still friends with many of the people I have known since kindergarten at Fern Hill. After many years of living further out I am back in St Louis Park and it is a terrific community.
“I love the beehive fireplace now located in restored Lilac Park. My mom and dad and my brother and my auntie and I used it for picnics years ago when it was located in the original Lilac Park on Minnetonka Boulevard in the 1950s before it was moved to this park. We grilled hot dogs in the beehive fireplace. (more…)
“Growing up in Crystal, I remember a birthday party in Robbinsdale’s Graeser Park back in the 1960s. All the kids at the party lined up on one of the curved benches and we walked along it.
“I remember the original Lilac Park near Minnetonka Boulevard. We used to go there for family picnics in the late 1950s/early 1960s with our grandparents who lived in St. Louis Park on 33rd and Xenwood. We called it Monkey Park. (The nickname comes from Como Park’s ‘Monkey Island’, which was also built by the WPA.) Now it’s called Rock Island.
I was very young, but I remember thinking that it was such a cool place! We climbed around the rock gardens which were already starting to become overgrown and were crumbling, even by then. (more…)
“I remember the beehive fireplaces and picnic tables from childhood, but not the council rings. I was a very young child 3-4 years old. I have memories of running through the lilac bushes, I believe kids had worn paths between them. (more…)
“I’m 80 years old now. My dad would take my sisters and me to play at Lilac Park along Highway 100 and Minnetonka Boulevard. There was an island everyone called Monkey Island (now known as Rock Island) that we would play on, picnic tables etc.
This had to have been the late 1940s after World War II, when we moved to St. Louis Park. All of that area was altered due to Highway 100 construction.”
Submitted 2.2.20
“Lilac Park near Minnetonka Boulevard was a favorite picnic place for my family when I was a kid in the 1950s. I was probably around five years old. My Dad used the beehive fireplace to grill for our picnics.
We picnicked on the south end of the park, near the beehive. There used to be a nursery nearby called Halla Nursery where we bought garden plants. After completing our stone house in Richfield, Dad built his own stone fireplace in the backyard.”
Submitted 2.2.20
“I remember those beehive fireplaces from when I was a kid. It was in the mid-1970s. I was living in south Minneapolis and as kids we rode our bikes everywhere. We would ride our bikes to Lake Calhoun and one day we decided to ride further and discovered the park with the beehive. It was one of our favorite spots. I had no idea of the name of the park.* We would ride there and pretend there were castles that we either defended or attacked, depending on which team we were on that day.
