Blood, Trauma, and Biohazard Cleanup in Minnetonka, MN

Minnetonka is a western Twin Cities suburb in Hennepin County, about 10 miles west of Minneapolis on the eastern side of Lake Minnetonka.

The city's name comes from the Dakota words mni, meaning water, and tanka, meaning big - the Dakota considered Lake Minnetonka and its shores sacred.

The first recorded Euro-American exploration of the area came in 1822, when a party from Fort Snelling traveled up Minnehaha Creek to the lake.

The Dakota ceded the Minnetonka area in the 1851 Treaty of Traverse des Sioux, and the community was founded in 1852.

A sawmill built on Minnehaha Creek near McGinty Road in 1852 was the first privately operated mill in Minnesota west of the Mississippi River, and its oak timbers were used in the first suspension bridge across the Mississippi at Saint Anthony Falls in 1853.

Minnetonka Mills, the settlement that grew up around that sawmill, was the first permanent European-American settlement west of Minneapolis in Hennepin County.

Minnetonka was incorporated as a city in 1956, more than a century after its founding.

The 2020 census counted 53,781 people in Minnetonka living in 23,694 households, with a median age of 44.0 years.

Two Minnetonka landmarks are on the National Register of Historic Places: the Charles H. Burwell House, an 1874 mill manager's home, and the Minnetonka Town Hall, built in 1906.

Minnetonka includes the eastern tip of Lake Minnetonka, and the lake's outlet, Minnehaha Creek, flows from the city through Minneapolis over Minnehaha Falls to the Mississippi River.