Steamboat Hopkins Sails Into The Spotlight!

Postcard circa 1915, Hopkins shown sailing toward Wayzata Bay

It’s well known that the Steamboat Minnehaha was one of seven sisters ships. Six of which were identical to her in nearly every way. Today, we’re going to look at one of Minnehaha’s sisters, the Hopkins.

Until Minnehaha’s raising in 1980, the Hopkins had the longest career of her sisters. Having been launched in 1906, she would ply the waters of Minnetonka for a total of 43 years. Ordered by Minneapolis’ Twin City Rapid Transit Company, the Hopkins had her parts cut from locally grown lumber in Wayzata at Moore Boat Works. Today, we’d know the location as the restaurant 6 Smith. The parts were loaded onto the Great Northern railway at the Wayzata Depot and sent to Minneapolis for assembly by the Twin City Rapid Transit Company’s workers. After assembly, she was quietly loaded onto a railcar and sent via streetcar track to Excelsior, where she would be launched in early May, 1906.

Hopkins and her sisters would experience a career unlike any other on Minnetonka or, really, in the whole United States. This fleet was nearly the only operational “streetcar boat” fleet in the nation. As well, they operated on strict time schedules, which gave both tourists and local residents a reliable method of transport around the lake.

By the early 1920's, however, things had turned for the worst. All seven streetcar boats were listed for sale by 1925 with only the Hopkins managing to be sold. Her sisters, meanwhile, would be either entirely dismantled or scuttled in the lake. Hopkins was purchased at the end of 1925 for a total of $1,500. In 2025, that’s roughly $28,000. Not bad for a fully functional steamboat.

Hopkins’ new owners would see her trademark Canary Yellow & Oxide Red colors layered over with a bright white paint scheme. Not only this, but she would go under a new name: Minnetonka.
The Hopkins, now Minnetonka, would return to the lake as an excursion boat. In the process, she would become the last steamer to sail on Lake Minnetonka. By the end of 1940, her aging triple expansion stream engine and coal boiler was replaced by a more modern gasoline powered engine. She’d sail on with this new engine for nearly a decade until, in 1949, she was deemed to be of little use.

Like three of her sisters before her, she had her machinery, seats, and superstructure stripped out and was towed to deep water between Big Island and Brackett’s Point. Here, she was sunk in roughly 75 feet of water. As the Minnetonka quietly slipped beneath the waves, a near century’s long lineage of steamers went with her. To many residents, the Minnetonka/Hopkins represented the last vestige of steam powered navigation on Lake Minnetonka.

Today, the Hopkins lies at the bottom of the lake in remarkably good condition. Some of the original window frames still stand upright on her deck and she is a regular attraction for local divers and marine archeologists. Whether visible or not, she remains a noteworthy part of our shared history on Lake Minnetonka. A lake that, nearly 120 years after her first launch, she still calls home.