Excelsior Commercial Historic District

Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2021.

From the record

One of 192 National Register listings published here for Hennepin County · listed in 2021 · category: District.

Sources: the National Register database, National Park Service

The listing

Address. Roughly bounded by Lake St., West Dr., 3rd St., and East Dr., Excelsior, 55331
When was it listed? October 2021
Category. district
City. Excelsior city
National Register reference number. 100007070 - assigned by the National Park Service when the property was listed.

The ground it stands on

3,589 words

The chapter on Excelsior City in History of Hennepin County and the City of Minneapolis, Including the Explorers and Pioneers of Minnesota, published 1881 names Excelsior. This is what it says, exactly as the scans read.

Excelsior was the first point of settlement in the township. Here was located the post-oflice, the first stores, shops, etc., forming tlie nucleus around which the early settlers located their claims and made their homes. The village was

Passage source: History of Hennepin County and the City of Minneapolis, Including the Explorers and Pioneers of Minnesota, published 1881.

The " Excelsior House " was built by George Galpin in 1851, and was at that time of small proportions. The original building is now used as a kitchen for the present hotel. John Green purchased the house and made some additions. The ownership then reverted to Galpin, who sold it to a Mr. Beckford. He managed it about four years, since which time it has been owned by the Wait family. The building has been enlarged from time to time, until it now contains room for 150 guests. It is kept open summer and winter.

Passage source: History of Hennepin County and the City of Minneapolis, Including the Explorers and Pioneers of Minnesota, published 1881.

Machine-read from a century-old scan, so expect the errors a machine makes: misspelled names, dropped words, stray characters.

Read the whole chapter on Excelsior City - 3,589 words on its settlement, mills, schools and churches.

Fires near this property

1 since 2004

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The federal wildfire occurrence database lists 1 fire within 5 miles of Excelsior Commercial Historic District in 2004, burning under an acre in total. None started naturally. None was recorded as arson. Distance is straight-line from the map coordinates, so a fire counted here may appear on a neighbouring settlement's page as well.

Reported cause	Fires
Missing data/not specified/undetermined	1

The most recent of them, most recent first, with the day each was reported and the service that recorded it.

Date	Cause	Size	Reported by	Name on the report
28 April 2004	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	under an acre	Minnesota Department of Natural Resources	not named

Every fire recorded in Hennepin County

Storms near this property

7 since 2005

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The National Weather Service names Excelsior, the town this property stands in, in 7 storm reports between 2005 and 2020: 4 thunderstorm wind, 3 hail. No death or injury is recorded in these reports. Each account below is quoted exactly as the forecast office filed it, from the NOAA Storm Events Database, and each date opens the federal record of that event.

When	Event	Place named	Harm	What the report says
July 2018	Thunderstorm Wind	Excelsior	-	A few trees were blown down in Excelsior.
July 2015	Thunderstorm Wind	Excelsior	-	A large tree branch damaged a roof near Christmas Lake in Excelsior. Power was also out in Excelsior.
June 2013	Thunderstorm Wind	Excelsior	-	Measured at the public safety center.
June 2005	Thunderstorm Wind	Excelsior	-	Trees and power lines were damaged. A picnic table was thrown through a picture window.
September 2005	Hail	Excelsior	-	A trained spotter reported nickel to quarter sized hail covering a deck.
September 2020	Hail	Excelsior	-	no account filed
June 2007	Hail	Excelsior	-	no account filed

Every storm recorded in Hennepin County

Map coverage status

No historic map-sheet match is published for this property yet. That does not mean no map exists. This record needs a coordinate-quality review before it can be joined to a sheet boundary. Browse the county's mapped places while that work is pending.

Listed places nearby

6 within 8 miles

Other National Register properties close enough to walk or drive between, ordered by distance from this one. Both positions come from the same geocoding pass that matched these properties to their map sheets.

Property	Distance	Listed
Excelsior Public School	0.1 miles	1980
Allemarinda and James Wyer House	0.2 miles	1977
MINNEHAHA (steamboat)	0.4 miles	2021
Peter Gideon Farmhouse	1.2 miles	1974
Minnetonka Beach Water Tower	2.7 miles	2019
Thompson Summer House	3.0 miles	1998

Sources for this property

National Archives record	The nomination case file for reference 100007070 in Record Group 79.
Hennepin County	All 192 listed properties in this county.

Provenance

Listing record. National Park Service National Register of Historic Places, listed-properties dataset, current to 2026-05-22.
Map join. Address geocoded through the United States Census geocoder, then tested against the published boundary of every sheet in the USGS Historical Topographic Map Collection.
How this page is made. Listing fields come from federal records; map-sheet coverage is a labelled coordinate-to-boundary calculation, not a source-field claim.
Wildfire. Short, Karen C. 2022. Spatial wildfire occurrence data for the United States, 1992-2020 [FPA_FOD_20221014]. 6th Edition. Fort Collins, CO: Forest Service Research Data Archive. https://doi.org/10.2737/RDS-2013-0009.6 Collected with United States Government funding and usable without additional permissions or fees.
Storms. NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information, Storm Events Database https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/stormevents/ A work of the United States government, no copyright under 17 U.S.C. 105. Narratives are quoted verbatim from the National Weather Service report and are not edited or summarised.