Features
The Insider's Guide to Lake Minnetonka
Everything you wanted to know but didn't want to ask.
by Melinda Nelson |
July 1, 2010
Melinda Jacobs enjoys the lake with her English Bulldog Walter, daughter Madeline, and husband Howard Grodnick
The Big Lake
A seagull's-eye view of the good life
THE STATS
125
Homes on the market worth more than $1 million
31
Channels
15
Islands
11
Public access points
9
Homes on the market worth more than $5 million
{1} In April, Lord Fletcher’s was the scene of a casting call for a
reality show based on Big Island, billed as a cross between
The Hills and
Jersey Shore. Stay tuned . . .
{2} When
Lora Noerenberg Hoppe, a Grain Belt Brewery heiress, died in 1972, she requested that her family’s estate be razed and transformed into a public garden.
{3} Tom Petters’s 9,300-square- foot home at 663 Bushaway sold for $5 million in April, only the second Lake Minnetonka home to sell for $5 million or more in the last two years.
{4} An $8.45 million home on Breezy Point Road is currently the costliest piece of real estate for sale on the lake.
{5} In 1912,
Walter and Mahala Douglas of Deephaven celebrated Walter’s retirement on the Titanic. When the ship went down, Walter, ever the gentleman, refused to join his wife in the lifeboat. Mahala died at the age of 81 in 1945.
{6} In 1926,
Frank Lloyd Wright was arrested on charges of infidelity at a Wildhurst cottage, where he had been hiding for six weeks with Olga Milanoff, who eventually became his fourth wife.