This week’s Back Roads is the work of The Land Correspondent Tim King. Photos by Jan King. Love on the lakes

from The Land - June 9, 2023

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We’d highly recommend a visit to the Legacy of the Lakes Museum and Gardens if you’re in, or near, Alexandria, in central Minnesota. Locals call it “The Boat Museum” but beautiful wooden boats of many sizes are just the glue that holds a large, multifaceted historical display about Minnesotans love affair with our lakes over the last century and a half.

When we visited, the first thing we saw upon entering the large, spacious, multi-roomed display area was a temporary exhibit of vintage photos and text which told the story of generations of Minnesotans going to a summer lake cabin or resort. The exhibit is one of several that will rotate through the museum this year.

Further into the museum hall are sleek and gleaming cedar strip boats made by a number of Minnesota’s wooden boat builders.

Among them is the 21-foot six inch cedar Garbo built by Dodge boats in 1930. The Garbo was powered by an eight cylinder 150 horse power engine. Minnesota’s boat builders didn’t just make boats for the wealthy, however. “The early boats were clearly meant to be rowed to their destination or pulled to their hot fishing spot by a launch owned by the resort. They would form a chain of boats and drop them off, one at a time, and then come back at the end of the day to retrieve them,” one of the museum’s many interpretive displays explains.

Wander through the exhibits, from room to room, and you’ll learn about the transition from row boats to outboard motors and the role Minnesota boat makers played in the transformation from wooden boats to the less expensive mass produced aluminum and fiberglass craft.

Most museum tours are self-guided and it’s easy for the casual visitor to be overwhelmed.

“A good way to start is to just take in the first room completely before moving on to the others,” Kaci Johnson, the museum’s communications and programs director said. Some of the children’s programing is designed to help young visitors take away bite-sized bits of learning.

“We provide activity sheets to visiting kids and to school tours that come in,” Johnson said. “The younger kid’s version includes a scavenger hunt, boat part identification, and signal flag activity for out in our garden. The older kids’ version is similar, but more difficult.”

Learn more about the museum and view a calendar of summer activities at legacyofthelakes.org The museum phone is (320) 759-1114. v