Uptown Minneapolis: The Chain of Lakes Neighborhood the Travel Lists Skip

1. The Lake Whose Name Changed: Bde Maka Ska

The most important thing to know about Uptown Minneapolis is the lake at its center. For most of its recorded Euro-American history it was called Calhoun — named after John C. Calhoun, the South Carolina senator and seventh Vice President of the United States, who was also one of the 19th century's most articulate defenders of slavery as a permanent institution.

The Dakota people, who inhabited the lakes area long before European contact, had always called it Mde Maka Ska — 'White Earth Lake' in the Dakota language. The name appeared on the first U.S. Army survey of the area in the 1820s, made under Calhoun's direction while he served as Secretary of War — the survey party assigned the senator's name to a lake the Dakota had named for generations.

The campaign to restore the Dakota name gained formal traction in the 2010s. The Minnesota Department of Natural Resources officially renamed it Bde Maka Ska in 2018. The change was challenged in court; the Minnesota Supreme Court ruled in 2020 that the DNR had the legal authority to rename it, and the U.S. Board on Geographic Names ratified the change the same year. Most Minneapolis residents, navigation apps, and official signs now use the restored name.

The renaming is the kind of local history that's easy to walk past but impossible to understand Uptown without. The neighborhood organizes itself around this lake, and the lake's name is now a different part of the city's conversation than it was five years ago.

2. The Chain of Lakes: Minneapolis's Finest Urban Trail System

Bde Maka Ska is not a single lake but the anchor of a connected system. Minneapolis's Chain of Lakes links Bde Maka Ska to Lake of the Isles to the north (connected via a short channel under Lake Street) and to Lake Harriet to the south (connected by a channel under 36th Street). Cedar Lake sits west of Bde Maka Ska and connects via a separate trail segment.

The paved loop around the full chain — roughly 13 miles combining Bde Maka Ska, Lake of the Isles, and Lake Harriet — is one of the finest urban cycling routes in the United States. It runs continuously car-free through park lawn, restored prairie, and mature tree canopy. On the south end, the Minnehaha Creek trail extends the network 4 miles to Minnehaha Regional Park, where a 53-foot waterfall drops inside the city limits — the falls referenced in Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's 1855 poem 'The Song of Hiawatha,' though Longfellow never visited Minneapolis and worked from geographic survey descriptions.

On Lake Harriet, the bandshell at the south end has hosted free outdoor concerts for over a century — the current structure was rebuilt in the 1980s but the programming tradition runs back to the late 19th century. Shows run June through late August, starting at 7:30 p.m. on weeknights, free lawn seating. The Lake Harriet Streetcar — a 1.5-mile restored 1890s streetcar running the lake's west shore — operates on summer and fall weekends, staffed by volunteers, and is the only operating vintage streetcar in the Twin Cities.

Late September is the trail's sweetest window: aspen and maple foliage at peak around the lake edges, temperatures in the low 60s F, and a fraction of the July crowds.

3. Hennepin and Lake: The Commercial Heart of Uptown

The intersection of Hennepin Avenue and West Lake Street is where Uptown's commercial activity concentrates. The four quadrants contain the Uptown Transit Station (the bus hub for most of the neighborhood), the retail strip along the west side of Hennepin, and — on the southeast corner — the Uptown Theatre.

The Uptown Theatre (2906 Hennepin Ave S) was built in 1939 as an Art Deco movie house with a Moorish Revival interior — ornate plasterwork, a vaulted ceiling, and a facade that stands out sharply against the brick commercial buildings on either side of it. It ran as a neighborhood single-screen through the 20th century, gained a reputation as an art-house venue in the 1980s and 1990s, and now operates as a concert and event venue after a restoration that preserved the original interior details. The facade is worth pausing on even if there is nothing showing.

The Midtown Greenway runs under this intersection on a former Chicago Great Western Railway corridor — now a 5.5-mile protected bike and pedestrian path connecting east Minneapolis to Uptown and continuing west to the suburb of St. Louis Park. Access via the Hennepin underpass (ramps on both sides of the street). Cyclists using the Greenway from downtown or the University of Minnesota area arrive at the heart of Uptown without touching a car lane — the fastest and most pleasant way into the neighborhood from the east side of the city.

The Greenway also connects to the Midtown Global Market (920 E Lake St) at its eastern end — a permanently occupied food hall in a restored Sears building with vendors representing Vietnamese, Mexican, East African, and Latin American cuisines. It is 2 miles from the Hennepin/Lake intersection but worth the detour by bike.

4. Lyn-Lake: The Independent Restaurant Strip

Three blocks east of the Hennepin/Lake intersection, the Lyn-Lake corner — Lyndale Avenue South at Lake Street — has the highest density of independently owned restaurants and bars in the neighborhood. The buildings are mostly two-story brick with apartments above commercial floors; the dining rooms are small and consistently full on weekday evenings.

Bryant-Lake Bowl (810 W Lake St, one block west of Lyndale) is the most unusual space in Minneapolis: a 14-lane bowling alley, a restaurant, and a theater under one roof. The theater books cabaret, comedy, and independent performance; the restaurant serves dinner before shows; the bowling lanes run until 2 a.m. on weekends. It has operated this combination continuously since 1993 without becoming a novelty — it is genuinely a neighborhood institution that locals use for all three things.

Ingebretsen's Nordic Marketplace (1601 E Lake St, on the east end of the Lyn-Lake corridor) has sold Scandinavian food imports and craft supplies from this address since the 1920s. Lingonberry preserves, lefse-making equipment, bulk meatball seasoning, Dala horse figurines — it is a functional shop, not a heritage performance. It reflects a real demographic fact: Minnesota received more Scandinavian immigrants per capita than any other U.S. state during the great immigration waves of the 1880s through 1910s, and the food culture on the Twin Cities' west side still shows it.

The Wedge Table (2009 Lyndale Ave S) is the sit-down restaurant operated by the Wedge Community Co-op, serving vegetarian-forward food sourced from the co-op's own supplier network. Its presence on Lyndale is the most visible sign of what makes Minneapolis's food culture structurally different from most American cities — which leads directly to the next subject.

5. The Co-op Culture: Why Minneapolis Eats Differently

Minneapolis has more food cooperatives per capita than almost any large American city. The reasons are intertwined: Scandinavian immigrant communal traditions, the 1960s countercultural energy that built some of the earliest modern food co-ops, and a political culture in which cooperative economics has had mainstream rather than fringe status for decades.

The Wedge Community Co-op (2105 Lyndale Ave S) was founded in 1974 in a rented storefront on Lyndale Avenue and grew into one of the highest-grossing single-store food cooperatives in the country. It operates without private equity or profit-extraction: surpluses return to members and the community rather than to investors. The produce section posts named-farm signage identifying origin. The prepared foods counter at the back — hot bar, salad station, daily soups — functions as one of the neighborhood's reliable inexpensive lunch options, typically $10–13 for a full meal.

Seward Co-op (2823 Franklin Ave E, 1.5 miles east) is the Wedge's historical counterpart, founded in 1972 in the Seward neighborhood. Together they anchor a cooperative grocery network that predates Whole Foods by a decade and Trader Joe's in the Twin Cities by two. The practical result for a visitor is a specific kind of grocery store — member-owned, independently sourced, genuinely cheaper than natural grocery chains on bulk items — that is rare in most American cities and unremarkable in Minneapolis.

The co-op movement extends beyond food: the Northfield-based Carleton and St. Olaf colleges, the worker-owned cleaning and child-care businesses in the Phillips neighborhood, the community land trusts preserving affordable housing in Uptown's adjacent Whittier neighborhood. Minneapolis has a structural preference for cooperative models that shapes the neighborhood's commercial character in ways that are hard to explain to visitors and immediately obvious to residents.

6. Is Uptown Safe? Getting There, Getting Around

Is Uptown safe? Uptown saw elevated crime rates in 2020–2022, connected to citywide stress following the murder of George Floyd at 38th and Chicago Avenue in May 2020 — an intersection 1.5 miles east of Uptown's core — and the prolonged unrest that followed. Several businesses on Lake Street were damaged or closed during that period. By 2025–2026, the commercial corridors at Hennepin/Lake and Lyn-Lake are active and well-trafficked day and evening. Standard urban awareness applies on residential side streets late at night, as in any large city. The Chain of Lakes trail is safe during daylight hours; stick to the main path after dark.

Getting from downtown to Uptown: Metro Transit Route 6 runs from downtown Minneapolis south along Nicollet Mall and then along Lyndale to the Uptown Transit Station (29th St and Hennepin Ave) — about 20 minutes, every 10–15 minutes during daytime hours. By bike, the Midtown Greenway from the 3rd Ave bridge area in downtown runs continuously to Uptown, approximately 15 minutes at an easy pace. Rideshare pickup at the Hennepin/Lake intersection is reliable. Do not drive on summer weekends or during the Uptown Art Fair — parking within three blocks of the lake is nearly impossible.

How does Uptown connect to the rest of Minneapolis? Nicollet Avenue south of downtown — called Eat Street (roughly 12th through 29th Streets) — runs between Uptown and downtown through a dense corridor of Vietnamese, Ethiopian, Mexican, and Pan-Asian restaurants that has been a Minneapolis food destination since the 1990s. North Loop, the converted warehouse district with the best cocktail bars in the city, is 20 minutes north by bike via the Kenilworth Trail to the riverfront. First Avenue (701 1st Ave N), the music venue where Prince filmed 'Purple Rain' in 1984 and recorded many of its concert sequences, is in the Warehouse District — 15 minutes by bus or bike from Uptown, and the anchor of the Twin Cities live music scene.

7. Best Time to Visit Uptown Minneapolis

Late September through mid-October is the window most worth knowing about. Fall color peaks around the Chain of Lakes in the last two weeks of September — the lake edges and the wooded paths between Bde Maka Ska and Lake Harriet turn gold and amber, cycling conditions are ideal, and the Lyn-Lake restaurant strip is operating at full pace without summer tourist pressure. Temperatures in the low 60s F during the day; bring a layer for evenings.

Summer (June through August) delivers the neighborhood at maximum energy: beach season at Thomas Beach on Bde Maka Ska's east shore, the Uptown Art Fair in early August, the Lake Harriet bandshell concerts Wednesday and Friday evenings and Sunday afternoons, and late sunsets (Minneapolis is far enough north that summer twilight extends past 9 p.m.). Restaurants and bars on Hennepin and Lyndale fill by 7 p.m. on summer weekends; walk-in waits are real.

Winter is the other side of the equation. Minneapolis winters are not metaphorically cold — January averages 16°F (-9°C), with wind chill regularly reaching -20°F. The Chain of Lakes freezes solid, and the parks department grooms cross-country ski trails on the lake surfaces and adjacent parks from December through March, free to use with your own skis. The Wedge Co-op, Bryant-Lake Bowl, and the Lyn-Lake bars stay busy year-round; the lakefront empties. Whether a Minneapolis winter is an experience or an obstacle depends entirely on preparation. Locals describe it simply as requiring the right coat.