Minnesota Local History

Shortly after acquiring Historic Murphy's Landing in 2002, Three Rivers Park District began a planning process for the park that resulted in a recommendation that the park name be changed to 'The Landing'. In March 2007, the Park District Board did approve the name change. As we began the process to implement this name change, our staff took a hard look at the name and its value in depicting the mission of the Park, it's promotability, and public recognition potential. Our discussions have led us to reconsider the name and prepare a new name recommendation for the Park.


While the name 'Historic Murphy's Landing' will be retained in the Park to represent the historic inn ruins and river landing areas, the entire Park will have a new name.


As some in the local history community were involved in our initial planning process back in 2003 and 2004, which resulted in the development of a Concept Master Plan for the Park along with the recommended name change, and some have been involved with Murphy's Landing in other ways, I wanted to ask for your feedback.


The names under consideration are:

• Minnesota River History Park


• Minnesota River Historic Park


• Minnesota River Historical Park


• Minnesota River Heritage Park

Two mission statements are relevant to this effort. They are the Park District's overriding mission statement and the mission statement for the Park itself.

• "The mission of Three Rivers Park District is to promote environmental stewardship through recreation and education in a natural resources-based park system."


• "Historic Murphy's Landing (The Landing) interprets how people, for thousands of years, have connected to the Minnesota River and its surrounding natural and cultural resources."

The name of the facility should effectively communicate the broad mission and range in time periods, resources, and experiences on the site. The Park District Naming Policy states: "Parks or areas and facilities within parks will be named for a geographic, natural, or historic feature of that park, local folk usage, historic events, to commemorate people who have made outstanding contributions to the Park District, or persons of local historic or outstanding civic service."


The name should:

• be inclusive of all aspects and time periods of the site.


• not emphasize the Euro-American aspects of the site.


• be easily related to the Minnesota River, a constant theme for the site.


• reflect the mission statement.


• be easily remembered and evocative of the site.


• be attractive to the public imagination.


• be unique to the market place.

Responses would be appreciated via email by November 30, 2007. If you have any questions or need further clarification, please email me or call me at 763-694-7640.


Thank you.


Denis R. Hahn,
Outdoor Education Manager - Special Facilities

As we all go into the Sesquicentennial, I'm interested to know what you're thinking about doing, what concerns you have, what help we can be to each other. It would be really useful, I think, if we could invent this wheel together (or at least the part of the wheel that suits us). My particular interest is linking academic and public historians, so I'm also interested to know what kind of help the academics might be able to offer. (For another purpose, a group of various kinds of Minnesota historians have met a couple of times and have begun to put together a list of names, e-mail addresses, and specialties in the field as well as list of important secondary sources and primary documents in print and on line -- would you be interested in these lists, for example?) The academic historians, for our part, are looking for outlets for our work, too.

So, my special interest is to find ways that we can help each other. What would be the best forms for that help?

Anyone interested in talking about this?

Thanks.

Annette Atkins
Professor of History
Saint John's University/College of Saint Benedict

It seems like a lot of organizations struggle with accepting athletic trophies into permanent collections. On the one hand, trophies seem to the general public like a very historic item - after all a trophy has a date, and sometimes other information placing the trophy in history. A trophy is a memorial to an accomplishment, and to not keep that might suggest that the accomplishment was transitory or unimportant. On the other hand, space and resources are limited at local historical organizations. Trophies take up both time to catalog and care for and space to store, and yet might be seen to have limited use in telling the story of any given area. From a cost-benefit point of view, perhaps trophies should be taken into collections only with great fore thought. So, two questions:

• How do you evaluate trophies when considering including them in your permanent collection?


• What are the stories that trophies help tell?

While on the road last week, one visit prompted the question of whether it was necessary for a historical organization to operate a museum to be a "good historical organization." Most of Minnesota's historical organizations do operate a museum as those organizations are collecting institutions that want to share history through artifacts. In a sense, sometimes a museum with exhibits is the mark of being a historical organization. There's no question that the public can connect with history through artifacts in educational exhibits, which must be housed somewhere. See the discussion on Pieces of History, for example. However, there's also no question that museums can be quite costly to operate. How should a new organization weigh the benefits and costs of collecting, exhibiting, and operating a museum? Can a historical organization be solid without a collection or museum in which to exhibit?