In 1948, a plaque was placed on 1111 Summer St. NE, declaring the land to be known as Beltrami Park. It was named after the first European explorer to claim to have found the headwaters of the Mississippi River in 1823. But the site’s past was not forgotten.
Jumping almost a century earlier, in 1849, Robert W. Cummings established a private cemetery in what is now Beltrami Park. It wasn’t until 1857 that it would receive the name of Maple Hill Cemetery.
The cemetery served as a resting place for pioneers of Minneapolis and “46 soldiers of the Grand Army of the Republic,” according to a plaque still in the park. These are soldiers from the Civil War. Between 1847 and 1890, more than 5,000 people were buried here…