History: Henry David Thoreau Observes Lake Harriet

Despite Henry David Thoreau’s chosen life as a naturalist, he did not possess a strong constitution.

In 1861, Thoreau was suffering from increasingly severe bouts of tuberculosis, which he had contracted in 1835. Thoreau’s doctor recommended that he experience a change in climate.

It was upon this recommendation that Thoreau embarked on his only trip to the west, with Horace Mann Jr., a young botanist as his companion. The two traveled through Niagara Falls, Detroit and Chicago before traveling by boat to St. Paul.

Thoreau was not impressed with St. Paul. “At St. Paul, they dig their building stone out of the cellar; but it is apparently poor stuff,” he wrote. After his first day in St. Paul he chose instead to spend his time in St. Anthony and then Minneapolis on the shores of Lake Harriet.

During his time at Lake Harriet, Thoreau and Mann were often accompanied by Dr. Charles L. Anderson, the state geologist. The men spent their days in field observation, examining the lakes, marshes and woods that surrounded them.

Thoreau cataloged sightings of catbird, goldfinch, oriole, tanager, horned lark, flicker and killdeer.

He was enthralled by the birds in the area, and described the discovery of a wild pigeon nest in length: “Built of slender hard twigs only, so open that I could see the eggs from the ground, and also so slight that I could scarcely get to it without upsetting it…At first, seeing the bird fly off, I thought it an unfinished nest.”

After hearing about the existence of a wild crab apple tree, Thoreau spent time searching for it unsuccessfully before enlisting the help of local residents. The wild crab apple tree was unfamiliar to him in his observations on the east coast and he eventually found a number of specimens on the pastureland of a local farmer.

Thoreau’s enthusiasm for the wild crab apple was equaled only by his interest in the prairie gopher. He took detailed notes about the animal, remarking that their patterning reminded him of “the … pattern of some Indian work, — porcupine quills, " gopher-work " in baskets and pottery.”

Thoreau’s journals tell us that while he stayed near Lake Harriet, his focus was almost exclusively on the flora and fauna of the woods, prairies, lakes and other natural features of Minnesota. He had little time for the traders, soldiers, Native Americans and pioneer settlers that inhabited the landscape.

Although Thoreau enjoyed his explorations around Lake Harriet, his health was not improved by the weather. June in 1861 was intensely hot and humid and he chose to cut his trip short and travel back to Concord for the remainder of the summer.

There is little literary record of Thoreau’s trip to Minnesota beyond his journals. It is conjectured that his health prevented him from producing much work after his return to Concord. Thoreau died at the age of 44, slightly less than a year after his trip to Lake Harriet.

Despite his lack of finished writing about his trip to Minnesota, the detailed notes about the native plants and wetlands surrounding Lake Harriet are still used today. The Minneapolis Park’s Environmental Operations staff use Thoreau’s lists of native plants to help reconstruct a picture of what the shorelines of Minneapolis lakes looked like prior to invasive species.