Before the suburbs: A Czech farm’s Eden Prairie legacy

Eden Prairie’s evolution from farmland to suburb wasn’t just a shift in landscape – it was a transformation of daily life.

For Janet Holasek Worrall, whose family farm once stood at Baker Road and Highway 62 – now the site of Life Time Fitness Crosstown – preserving that history became a personal mission.

Her book,  “A Czech Farm in Minnesota,” published in December 2024, traces her Czech ancestors’ immigration to Minnesota in the 1850s, their settlement in Hopkins and Eden Prairie, and a century of farming the land.

The book is dedicated to her parents, Richard and Evelyn Holasek, who passed away in 1996 and 2002, and her sister, Dorothy, who died in 2010. Drawn from family letters, newspaper clippings, and recordings of her mother’s later-life recollections, the memoir captures the rhythms of farm life between the 1920s and 1960s.

Holasek Worrall, a 1958 Eden Prairie High School graduate,  pursued higher education and earned a doctorate in history. She spent more than 30 years as a professor at the University of Northern Colorado, where her historian’s mindset shaped how she documented her family’s past.

“I had always wanted to leave a record, mainly for my grandchildren and future generations, because we are a Czech family,” she said. “I’m 100% Czech – both of my parents were – and I grew up in what was largely a Czech community.”

A historian’s approach: From memories to a book

Holasek Worrall has always thought like a historian – documenting, recording, preserving.

“Once I retired, I finally had time to put things together,” she said.

At first, her notes were just fragments of memory, small moments captured on paper. Then, someone suggested she turn them into a book.

“Maybe I will,” she thought. And so she did.

What began as a personal project soon took over her days.

“I started seriously working on it about a year and a half ago, and the process took much longer than I expected,” she said.

There were drafts. Then more drafts.

“I spent all of last year going back and forth with my editor – revising, making corrections, selecting pictures,” she said. “I was happy she wanted to include so many photos, so the book has quite a few.”

At last, in late December, it went to press.

The finished product – 300-plus pages with 30-plus footnotes – wasn’t quite academic, she said, but that was never the goal.

“An academic book would have more (footnotes), but this is a personal account,” she said.

The farm that became part of a suburb

For decades, Richard and Evelyn Holasek ran a dairy operation, tended vegetable gardens and grew strawberries and raspberries. Evelyn worked alongside her husband, pitching hay, husking corn and managing the household.

By the 1960s, the farm’s fate was sealed. Highway 62 and Interstate 494 cut through the land, accelerating suburban development.

In 1967, the couple relocated to a pink ranch-style house farther south on the property, where they lived during their “golden years” until they sold it in 1989. That house was later moved to an unknown location but originally sat just south of what is now the tennis courts at Holasek Hill Park.

“What had been a family farm was replaced with a health club,” reads the book’s back cover.

That happened over time. Northwest Racquet and Swim Club built the Crosstown Club at 6233 Baker Road in the 1980s. By 2006, then under Wellbridge’s management, it was sold to Life Time Fitness.

“If you drive through that area now, you’ve probably seen the big Eden Prairie water tower and the huge power lines,” Holasek Worrall said. “That land used to be my family’s farm – the place where we grew strawberries and pastured our cows. There’s no sign of it now. That big Life Time Fitness facility sits where our farm used to be.”

Echoes of a Czech legacy

While the farm is gone, reminders of Eden Prairie’s Czech heritage remain.

Many Czech immigrants from Bohemia (now the Czech Republic) settled in Minnesota in the 19th century, forming tight-knit farming communities like the one Holasek Worrall’s family called home.

In her book, she highlights the strong Czech community in both Eden Prairie and Hopkins, where many businesses were Czech-owned. Her mother grew up in Hopkins before marrying a farmer in 1924, and her father, Stanley Svec, ran a grocery store on Excelsior Avenue.

“Shady Oak Cemetery (in Minnetonka) is still there – it was a burial place for many Czech families,” she said. “The Faith Presbyterian Church on Excelsior Boulevard was originally the John Hus Presbyterian Church, serving the Czech community for many years.”

She also documents historical events that shaped the community, such as the 1918-1919 flu pandemic, the polio epidemic of the 1950s, and the Hennepin County Home School (Glen Lake Farm School for Boys), which operated in Minnetonka for nearly a century.

“I wanted to document places and institutions that no longer exist,” she said. “It’s not just about my family – it’s about a changing community.”

Yet, one piece of her family’s history still stands.

The 1890s farmhouse where Holasek Worrall grew up has been moved twice and now sits on the grounds of True Friends’ Camp Eden Wood, originally established in 1925 as Glen Lake Children’s Camp – a summer refuge for children with tuberculosis.

“The woodwork is still in good shape, but the plumbing and electrical systems are outdated,” Holasek Worrall said of the house, which she last toured in 2022. “I’m not sure what will happen to it – it would be incredibly expensive to renovate.”

A record of ordinary lives

Holasek Worrall’s book is filled with family photos – snapshots of a lost way of life. Among them: her mother’s bread-making bowl and a towering haystack.

“I really love the haystack photo on the cover because it represents my mother’s role,” she said. “She worked so hard – not just in the house, but outside, too. She made hay, husked corn – she did so much farm labor. She wasn’t just a mother and a wife; she was actively involved in farm work every day.”

She wrote the book to document ordinary lives – the ones history often overlooks.

“We read so much about the rich and famous, but we rarely read about how everyday people lived,” she said. “I wanted to leave a record of what day-to-day life was like for regular farm families.”

The book, published by Spring Cedars, is available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble and from the publisher.

Holasek Worrall hopes it will strike a chord with those who remember a different Eden Prairie.

“The farm is gone, and the area has changed dramatically,” she said. “But there’s still a story here. I just want people to know it exists.”

She said she never missed farm life after leaving for college and settling in Colorado.

“Even if my parents had sons instead of just my sister and me, I don’t think they could have kept the farm going,” she said. “Small family farms just couldn’t survive with mechanization and changes in agriculture.”

Still, she is grateful for her upbringing.

“My sister felt the same,” she said. “We knew where our food came from – potatoes, carrots, everything. We knew what farm life was like.”