Eden Prairie is a city in Hennepin County, Minnesota, United States. It had a population of 64,198 at the 2020 census, making it the 16th-largest city in the state. The city is adjacent to the north bank of the Minnesota River, upstream from its confluence with the Mississippi River, about southwest of downtown Minneapolis.
Set in the Twin Cities' second ring suburbs, the community was designed as a mixed-income city model and is home to numerous commercial firms, including the headquarters of SuperValu, C.H. Robinson Worldwide, Winnebago Industries, Starkey Hearing Technologies, Lifetouch Inc., SABIS, and MTS Systems Corporation. It contains the Eden Prairie Center mall and is the hub of SouthWest Transit, providing public transportation to three adjacent suburbs. The television stations KMSP and WFTC are based in Eden Prairie. The nonprofit news organization Eden Prairie Local News (EPLN) also serves the community.
The area features numerous municipal and regional parks, conservation areas, multi-purpose trails, and recreational facilities. There are more than of multi-use trails, of parks, and of open space. Popular recreational areas include Staring Lake, Lake Riley, Purgatory Creek, Miller Park, Round Lake, and the Minnesota River Bluffs Regional Trail.
History
thumb|left|Cummins Cabin, pre-1860
thumb|left|Current photo of the Cummins-Phipps-Grill House
thumb|left|Flailing out beans at Cummins Farm
Native Americans were the first to live in the area. Originally, the land was part of the Great Dakota Nation, but when the Ojibwe arrived from the Great Lakes region, the tribes began to clash over the land. The Ojibwe were armed with knives and guns traded to them by white settlers and fur traders, and after years of bloody warfare the Ojibwe had forced the Dakota to give up all their land east of the Mississippi River, and north of the Crow Wing River, land that did not include what is now Eden Prairie.
On May 25, 1858, a battle was fought between the Dakota and the Ojibwe in the southern part of Eden Prairie, just north of the Minnesota River, an area known as Murphy's Ferry. The Ojibwe wished to "avenge the murder" of one of their people by the Dakota the previous fall. The Ojibwe had 200 warriors and the Dakota somewhere between 60 and 70, but the Dakota proved victorious, wounding the young Ojibwe chief. Manuscripts indicate that Cummins was an avid and respected horticulturist, scientist, and farmer; he used his farmland to experiment with different strains of apples and grapes to try to find one that could withstand the harsh climate in Minnesota. The Cummins family sold this property to the Phipps family in 1908.
thumb|Reconstructed Minneapolis-St. Louis railway depot
The city was originally named "Eden" in 1853 by the writer Elizabeth F. Ellet, who chose the name because of her admiration of the "beautiful prairie" that occupies the southern part of town. Eden Prairie's town board held its first meeting in a log schoolhouse on May 11, 1858, the same day Minnesota became a state. In the 1870s, a post office called Washburn was established in Eden Prairie Township and would be discontinued in 1903. Also that decade, a depot along the Minneapolis-St. Louis Railroad was constructed near modern Eden Prairie Road and Highway 212. A replica on restricted land was built in 2022 beside the Minnesota River Bluffs LRT Regional Trail.
Eden Prairie's farming community grew slowly over the years. For most of its existence, Eden Prairie was a slow-growing, pastoral village on the far southwest fringes of the Twin Cities. Between 1880 and 1960, Eden Prairie's population only grew from about 739 to 2,000. Flying Cloud Airport was the first sign of big development in 1946. The 1960s and 1970s were decades of growth for the city's parks and recreation system. In the mid-1970s, the community gained a higher profile with the addition of Interstate Highway 494 and the Eden Prairie Center mall. Eden Prairie became a village in 1962 and a statutory city in 1974. One of Eden Prairie's popular lakes, Staring Lake, is named for Jonas Platt Staring (1809–1894), who built the first house by the lake.
Geography
thumb|Bryant Lake, in Eden Prairie, originally named Bryant's Lake or one of many "Long Lake" lakes in Minnesota
Eden Prairie is about southwest of Minneapolis along the northern side of the Minnesota River.
Interstate 494, U.S. Highways 169 and 212, and Minnesota State Highway 5 are four of the city's main routes.
Eden Prairie's land consists of rolling hills and bluffs overlooking the Minnesota River, with zones of prairie and mixed (primarily deciduous) forests. Eden Prairie has parks such as Round Lake Park, Staring Lake Park and Bryant Lake Regional Park, with trails for running and biking.
According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has an area of , of which is land and is water.