From the late 1870s through the early 1890s, wealthy people from all over the country rode trains and steamboats to the Twin Cities and then took Hill's Great Northern railway out to Lake Minnetonka.

By 1884, there were no fewer than 27 hotels and boarding houses along the Lake's shores. Two of the largest were the Lake Park Hotel in Excelsior and the St. Louis Hotel in Deephaven. They were built of wood from the neighboring forests and none of them remain standing—they all succumbed to fire.

On July 4th, 1882, James J. Hill opened the Grand Dame of the Lake, Hotel Lafayette, on the peninsula which is the highest point on the Lake between Crystal Bay and Lafayette Bay, then called Holmes Bay. It was a grand building indeed: its hallways were ten feet wide; there were three grand stairways; the hotel had 300 guest rooms; the building was 750 feet long by 90 feet wide. The hotel cost $350,000 to construct (a cost of $6.3 million in 2003 dollars), needed 150 employees, and had furnishings shipped at great expense from the East Coast.

One frequent visitor wrote, "It was a place of life and gaiety and many people. One was impressed by the size of the building itself: the big, broad verandas which were in the evening crowded with family groups, many from the South; the musical concerts which preceded the dancing. There were two ballrooms, two orchestras, two very active and busy bars, an inner courtyard with quite a menagerie of wild life. There were the arrivals and sailings of the big boats, and various horse equipages from the adjacent summer residents. The arrival of the 5:05 train from Minneapolis was always a signal for the start of the evening's festivities. Of course, there were excursions on the lakes, moonlight rides, and many parties. Altogether, it was a live, gay and crowded scene." [James Ford Bell]

By 1893, yellow fever had been controlled, people's need for the new and curious caused them to look elsewhere, and a financial panic curbed discretionary spending. Only four years later, in 1897, the Hotel Lafayette was destroyed by fire. It happened in the winter. The Hotel was boarded up. A fire engine traveled by train to the Lake, but it was too late. The Hotel was gone—and so was the heyday of the resort era on Lake Minnetonka.

Read more about the Buildings.